Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2024
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A raucous and wickedly smart satire of Hollywood, toxic fandom, and our chronically online culture, following a washed-up actor on his quest to revive the cult TV show that catapulted him to teenage fame
David Crader is a has-been. A former child actor from the hit teen drama Rev Beach, he now rotates between his new roles as deadbeat dad, recovering alcoholic, and occasional videogame voice actor. But when David is summoned to Los Angeles by Grace, his ex-wife and former co-star, he suddenly sees an opportunity for a reboot—not just of the show that made him famous, but also of his listless existence.
Hollywood, the Internet, and a fractured nation have other plans, however, and David soon drinks himself to a realization: This seemingly innocuous revival of an old Buffy rip-off could be the spark that sets ablaze a nation gripped by far-right conspiracy, climate catastrophe, and mass violence.
Reboot is a madcap speculative comedy for our era of glass-eyed doom-scrolling and Millennial nostalgia—and yet it's still full of heart. It's a tale of former teen heartthrobs, striving parents, internet edgelords, and fish-faced cryptids, for anyone who has looked back on their life and wanted—even if but for a moment—to hit "reset."
"Taylor's fluency, intellectual nimbleness, and playful sense of humor call to mind the work of David Foster Wallace; the reader can easily imagine David Crader's video game adaptation of Infinite Jest. An affecting character study and excoriating indictment of the way we live now." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Justin Taylor's apocalyptic Reboot pulls off a feat few novels of our online present manage: reading it actually feels like tapping into the internet's best celeb gossip, fiercest fandom outrages, and wildest conspiratorial rabbit holes." —Publishers Weekly
"An introspective literary look at contemporary entertainment, families, culture, and the never-ending search for connection." —Booklist
"For all the talk of an Other America—that underground country whose president is Trump and whose capital is Florida—we have precious few novels of its condition, and none as powerful, passionate, whacked-out, and pathic as Justin Taylor's Reboot." —Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus
"A hilarious portrait of how our culture's insistence on making everything a reference to something else has destabilized reality and our ability to make meaning." —Isaac Butler, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Method
This information about Reboot was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Justin Taylor is the author of the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, the story collections Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings; and the memoir Riding with the Ghost. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Bookforum, and the Oxford American. He is a contributing writer to The Washington Post Book World and the director of the Sewanee School of Letters. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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