I picked up Paul Neilan’s Apathy and Other Small Victories a few months back. The title sounded great and a cover snippet tried to compare it to Camus, Bukowski and Office Space. Who wouldn’t love that? The book wasn’t all that, and I cared enough to warn others.

The cooler-than-thou main character never developed much rapport with reader, be it negative or positive. The scattershot style of telling the story that included consecutive sentences contradicting each other was cute at first but grew tiresome after the first twenty pages. It did, to be honest, remind me of conversations I’ve led, but I’ve never carried on such a spiel for the chronological duration of 230+ pages. I also felt the author went a little too far with his jokes about deaf folks. It crossed the line, in my opinion. If apathy is a “lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern” then why even bother to read his words and why did he spend time writing it?