Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

 I had to read this book twice to really appreciate the writing since I was so caught up in the story. A never named, brilliant, but often hapless black author is on a book tour to promote his novel, Hell of a Book. Believed to be plagued by an overactive imagination, he struggles to account for the appearance of a young boy - so black he is called Soot - beside him in cab rides, in his hotel room, out of nowhere. Meanwhile, the lead story in the news of the day involves the death of a young black male - one of many victims of the senseless racist nature of today's society. How are these three individuals connected? Is it important that we know? Sometimes funny, sometimes intimate, it is mostly a meditation on what it means to be black and male in America. In an interview, Mott indicated that he kept waiting for someone to write the kind of book he thought needed to be written about the topic. When no one did, he decided to write a hell of a book.