We Can Save Us All

September 3, 2018
In Nemett’s imaginative debut, a group of troubled Princeton students gather off campus in the near future at the Egg, an off-campus research building named for its domelike shape. Thoreau-quoting and insecure in his masculinity, the wimpy David Fuffman is the most recent addition to the Egg, and he joins a handful of other boys who don’t fit neatly into the Princeton ecosystem. They’re led by Mathias Blue, an enigmatic rich kid who has shaped the Egg into both a safe haven for boys like David and something of a bunker for doomsday, which feels imminent. As blizzards, trade wars, and actual warfare ravage the world, the residents of the Egg adopt superhero personas in an attempt to do good (while on performance-enhancing drugs) by creating a 90-day “spectacle” of events meant to combat evil (mostly within themselves). As their collective, called the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes, grows more ambitious, both in their actions and in their public profile, they’re joined by Haley Roth, David’s high school drug dealer and current crush, with whom he shares an uneasy history. Fiery, funny, and fearless, Haley is the real standout of the novel—especially compared to the mopey David—and readers will wish she’d been given narrative precedence and a less clichéd backstory. Still, Nemett’s refreshing and high-energy novel has the heart and moral tension of a superhero story and the growing pains of a bildungs-
roman.

November 1, 2018

DEBUT In this first novel, the drug-fueled, phantasmagoric environment of the college elite intersects with the cogent realities of environmental degradation. The book is built around student leader Mathias Blue's hypothesis of an impending time collapse and told from the perspective of David Fuffman, a Princeton student under Mathias's spell. After a drunken Halloween night that ends terribly for David's friend Haley, David faces a moral quandary. One of his solutions is to create the Un-named Supersquadron of Vigilantes (USV), which has a group of Mathias Blue's male housemates, including David, dressing up as invented superheroes. David and Matthias lead the USV in a well-publicized rescue of trapped residents of Pennington, NJ, snowed in by a blizzard. As the USV gains in popularity, it grows to include women, including Haley, but its antics become riskier, and Mathias Blue morphs from merry prankster to cult leader. VERDICT In the end, it's the parents who step in the clean up the mess. This is an unlikely but timely contribution to the ongoing #metoo dialog as well as humorous riposte to concerns about society and the environment. Highly recommended.--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2018
Hey, what if a book was like Fight Club (1996) but instead of fights, everyone takes a heroic dose of drugs and plays superhero?This ambitious, half-cracked debut about Generation Z students struggling with a bent concept of the future in the midst of a slow apocalypse is an ambitious but acidic take on superhero stories and the price of growing up. Our nice-guy protagonist is David Fuffman, a struggling engineering student at Princeton University in a time of "Chronostrictesis," where time itself seems to be running out as climate change threatens the future of the human species. His life changes dramatically when he meets Mathias Blue, a charismatic, wealthy ne'er-do-well who has set up his lair, "The Egg," as a kind of off-campus, drug-fueled incubator for social change solutions. "At the Egg, you're always working on your project, your vision, your Thesis--something only you can do," says Mathias. David's Achilles' heel is Haley Roth, his punky high school drug dealer, on whom he has a brutal crush. Jacked up on a new stimulant called Zeronal laced with DMT, the residents of the Egg go through something of a psychic epiphany with visions of the future. David's thesis becomes the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes, a cartoonish attempt at forming a radicalized Justice League, with appropriately disastrous results summed up in a mock Atlantic article, "Dissent in the Age of Flibberflibbergaboobieism." The novel takes a dark turn in its final third, as secrets are revealed, rivalries erupt, and Mathias' dark visions of "The End" fuel a brainwashing from which no one in his orbit remains unscathed. Nemett's recipe for disaster is sound--a dash of Pynchon, a hint of Neal Stephenson, and a nihilistic undertone that belies a semihopeful denouement. While it never quite finds its balance between social satire and youth in rebellion, it's still a confident, visceral debut that's worth the ride.A timely fable of generational angst armed with that old punk ethos: no future.

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Starred review from October 1, 2018
Nemett's incredible debut follows David Fuffman, a comics-obsessed freshman at Princeton in 2021 who is indoctrinated into a small cadre of oddball students by Mathias Blue, an extremely wealthy student who funds projects designed to help others during the impending climate crisis. Along with the very real extreme snow and rain, Nemett's near future highlights what the realities of climate change could be, including the fringe theory, chronostrictesis, which suggests time is compressing and changing, and which is gaining traction. At their wonderfully weird home, The Egg, David and Mathias create a place for others to unlock their inner superhero?costumes, aliases, and all?to help combat the coming theoretical apocalypse. The novel switches between the perspectives of David, or Infrared, and his old high-school crush, Haley Roth, also at Princeton. As their group grows into a ridiculous cult, and it becomes unclear what is real, there are numerous staggeringly imaginative set-pieces involving a striking cast of characters. With a preapocalyptic setting like that of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story (2010) and soaked in hallucinogens in a way that recalls Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy, Nemett's wondrously fresh novel positively bursts with charm, heart, and invention.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)