Published By: John Murray
Pages: 320
Released On: 04/06/2026
After successful ad exec Alan Anderson bombs the biggest pitch of his career, he has an epiphany. His entire career has been about making people buy stuff that they don’t need so they feel perpetually unsatisfied and less-than. After a lifetime of striving for capitalism, Alan is opting out.
He retires to the ridiculously extravagant playhouse in his family’s suburban Connecticut garden (a classic example of something the Andersons didn’t need), gives up showering, shoe-wearing, and purchases of all kinds. He might even read a book! This is all very upsetting for his wife Vivian, who is on the verge of being accepted into the insanely elite Queen’s Anne Club – guaranteed to make all her insecurities disappear and her children popular.
But maybe everyone will want to buy what Alan’s not selling? And, in losing his ambition, might he find what we’re all looking for?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and John Murray for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I had such high hopes for this but it wasn’t for me.
It didn’t start well. I wasn’t going to make a decision on the opening chapter or two, but I did struggle almost instantly. The sentence structure felt weird. I mean, the first few pages were all about milk. Which is fine, I understood the reason why in terms of the whole novel, but for me anyway, it wasn’t the most understandable or exciting starts to a story.
And if I’m honest, it didn’t get much better for me.
I don’t mind an unlikeable character, if they’re written in a way that almost makes them likeable, the kind we love to hate. But every single character was unlikeable and not in a good way. And so I didn’t care about them or what happened.
And it doesn’t have a strong plot. I don’t mind a weak plot if the characters are good, but as I said earlier, they are not, and so it was failing on all parts.
It felt like it was trying to be this big novel that was saying something really profound but it became too aware of itself and felt like wading through mud.
I seem to be one of only a handful of negative reviews so I won’t say the book is bad, because if it was bad then there would be no positive reviews at all. I’m just saying it had a lot of problems an it wasn’t the book for me.
It gets an extra star for it’s concept because that felt strong, even if it didn’t come through.
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