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October 11, 2021
Jacobs (Palaces) tackles the traumas of adolescence and the desperation of suburban life with this grimy, layered tale. A shadowy, sinister collective entity watches and guides the actions of a group of teens in Adena, Ohio, using the cracks in their relationships to gain purchase within their psyches: tenderhearted Sarah struggles to maintain her sense of self as she deals with manipulation and abuse; Greg grapples with psychosis that drives him toward self-destruction; David becomes obsessed with an online cornucopia of fascist propaganda and bizarre porn, and alienates himself from everybody he knows. The result might be best described as “hangout horror”—there’s no traditional plot to speak of as Jacobs dips in and out of the characters’ lives through the eyes of an invisible watcher. Instead, the narrative wallows in the small-scale routines of its characters as their lives spiral out of control and toxic cycles repeat themselves. Despite some near-Faulknerian passages zeroing in on the characters’ twisty inner lives, the meandering prose struggles to maintain momentum. Still, readers looking for a horrific take on coming of age may want to give this a try. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency.

December 1, 2021
The latest from Jacobs offers a terrifying glimpse into teen anomie and rootlessness and the ways violence can take root there. Yes, it's Midwestern teen gothic, and narrated in a sinister, watchful first-person plural, but Jacobs' novel bears less resemblance to The Virgin Suicides (1993) than to dystopian works like Lord of the Flies (1954) or even A Clockwork Orange (1962). The story is told by malign forces seeking ways to create chaos and bloodshed by finding the chinks in teen psyches and "jumping" into them, and the aimless, battered teens of Adena, Ohio, offer vulnerabilities and footholds aplenty. Parents are almost invisible here; the (mostly well-to-do) kids have been left to their own, well, devices, left to stew in their angst and solitude and the hyperviolent culture that besieges them from every side. Greg is grappling with mental illness but trying a little, it seems, to reengage with the world; meanwhile, his younger sister, Beth, terrorized by her brother, is receding. David gives himself over to grim corners of the web featuring right-wing conspiracy and porn, and he's so oblivious that throughout the three weeks the book spans, he's hosting a squatter who has colonized his basement and swiped his online identity. Claire is an irritable, mercurial young woman trying on a succession of masks, none of which quite fit. Graham is the scarred survivor of a school shooting. Sarah means well, approximately...but she's so ingenuous and so malleable and so un-self-aware that others find it easy to project themselves onto her, to use her empathy for their own ends. The book is daring and stylish, occasionally even having flashes of black humor; Jacobs is a talented writer. But the darkness is so relentless and remorseless that the reader can feel pursued by it, punished. Grim, violent Midwestern gothic--hard to watch, hard to turn away from.

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