He helps ground the author when he encounters people on his book tour who recommend that he should or shouldn’t highlight the Black experience in his writing. He is a very dark-skinned Black child who seems to be the author’s alter-ego.
And as the stories converge, the reader learns the impact of his formative years.Īnother character is “The Kid,” who is invisible to anybody but the author. He is marginalized and lonely until he finds his voice in writing. Soot copes by delving further into his imagination and uses his stories to establish his identity. When he witnesses his father being murdered by the police, it is a tragic life-changing event. He is bullied in school and does not feel comfortable in his black skin. From an early age, his parents teach him to be invisible. A very dark-skinned boy, Soot leads a troubled life in Bolton, North Carolina. Others might not agree, but I think the novel Hell of a Book that won the National Book Award is about identity, forgiveness, and acceptance more than about love.Īnother segment is told in the third person and is much bleaker. When the story says this book is a love story, I think it is more the fictional book more than the actual book. The fictional book is entitled Hell of a Book. The book challenges the reader to figure out the plot of the book the fictional author is selling on his book tour.
His drinking and vomiting are most likely his reactions to the redundant questions he answers about his book.
These segments tend to be somewhat optimistic even though the author drinks too much and vomits frequently.
He is a daydreamer with an overactive imagination, a condition that he claims has been diagnosed by a mental health professional. A nameless Black author tells his story in the first person. Hell of a Book alternates between two main stories.
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