The Book of I

A dark, serio-comic novel about how an ancient bloodbath at a monastery on a tiny Scottish island ultimately provokes redemption for three unlikely survivors.

A jarring, bloody opening scene launches The Book of I, a dark, compact, first novel rife with astonishing comical twists by Scottish playwright David Greig.

The setting is the year 825 at a monastery on the tiny isle of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. Viking Norsemen raid the island in search of a silver reliquary said to house the bones of Saint Columba, an Irish Catholic Priest (and later canonized saint) who established the remote religious enclave. The 70 devout monks who live in humble isolation on the island seem to rejoice at this invasion, willing and eager to be martyred for Christ in order glorify God—all except for one monk: Brother Martin resists the pull of glorified eternity and salvation. Amidst his cowardice, he hides deep in an outhouse—yes, a punishment as fetid as imagined!

In the aftermath of a particularly gruesome and graphically depicted battle (readers will shiver at Greig’s detailed literary descriptions of beheadings and slayings), Brother Martin survives along with, Una, a “handsome woman,” a beekeeper and medicinal mead maker, who is secretly happy to be liberated from her ogre, now dead husband. One of the aging, elder Viking leaders, Grimur, a bombastic brute with a sensitive side, also survives—this after he is mistakenly taken for dead and buried alive. His “resurrection” certainly doesn’t make for congeniality among this unlikely trio. However, there lies the great dramatic irony in Greig’s clever, inventive story that delivers a host of humorous twists about their survival and ultimate forced camaraderie while also reflecting on more sobering issues of forgiveness and trust, love and redemption.  

The Book of I by David Greig

Europa Editions, $21.25 hardcover, 9798889661276, 160 pages

Publication Date: September 9, 2025 

To order this book on Bookshop.org (formerly Indiebound) link HERE

Link HERE to learn more about dramatist/author David Greig

The Threat

A clever dark comedy about an unassuming New Yorker whose dull, stunted life takes wildly hilarious turns after he receives a death threat. 

Nathaniel Stein, writer for the New Yorker, dishes up an inventively absurdist, dark comedy about an unassuming middle-aged man whose life goes farcically off the rails in The Threat.

 

Melvin Levin is a single, conscientious, rule-following, 41-year-old with a bad back. He lives alone in a New York City apartment, and his social circle consists largely of bestowing good deeds upon an elderly neighbor. One night while Melvin is anticipating a promotion at his totally nondescript job, the boring, dull routine of his life is suddenly overturned when he receives a “plain little note” in the mail: “Mr. Melvin Levin, I’m going to kill you,” the note begins. “You’ve worn out my patients for the last time and your through…” The unelaborate note, complete with poor grammar, becomes like a “flag planted atop the mountain of bad luck” that was Melvin’s life. The threat produces a ferocious sense of anxiety in Melvin, who--having lived with “unerring politeness” and an “unceasing, almost superstitious rectitude, taking great pains to avoid rubbing people the wrong way”--struggles to decipher whom he might’ve wronged. Despite the chilling implications of the note, Melvin ultimately becomes empowered and excited by the idea of having an anonymous, formidable enemy, and he undergoes a hilarious life transformation.

 

Stein’s smart, clever first novel will charm readers with a simple premise that snowballs into a side-splitting, thought-provoking meditation about how one man’s seemingly inconsequential life finally overflows with grandiose meaning when faced with the prospect of death.

The Threat by Nathaniel Stein
Keylight Books (Turner Publishing), $27.99 hardcover, 9781684429691, 192 pages
Publishing Date: January 16, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (February 2, 2024), link HERE 

 

Mona at Sea

A darkly comic story about a bright, clever college grad who struggles to come of age during the tumultuous Great Recession.

Mona at Sea is a very funny, darkly comic first novel about a high achiever, on the brink of starting her adult life, who has her hopes and aspirations dashed amid the Great Recession.

 

In 2008, in suburban Tucson, Ariz., bicultural, 23-year-old Mona Mireles graduates from college--top of her class and with an equally high opinion of herself--and is eager to start a promising new finance career on Wall Street in New York City. When the job suddenly dissolves amid the economic downturn, Mona becomes a "sad millennial" in more ways than one. Down on her luck, she sinks into anxiety and depression. Broke, lovelorn and not happy living at home--her parents' marriage is in a shambles--she is forced by her mother to attend a support group for others also in search of work. There, she meets other defeated, unemployed souls who make Mona's woes pale in comparison as she gets a fuller experience of all that awaits in the real world.

 

The story of Mona's efforts to reboot her life and find meaning in its pitfalls is filled with unexpected, bittersweet twists and turns. However, it's her intimately rich first-person narration--how her scorching wit and wisdom mask her own vulnerability and foibles--that makes her story come fully alive. Mona Mireles, ever a perfectionist--and unabashed in sharing her cleverly rendered observations, criticisms and insights--will keep readers laughing as she rises above her sad, zany lot in life.

Mona at Sea by Elizabeth Gonzales James

Sante Fe Writer’s Project, $15.95 paperback, 9781951631017, 270 pages

Publication Date: June 19, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 6, 2021), link HERE

Anxious People

This clever, dark comedy about human nature and relationships starts with a real estate open house that goes dreadfully awry when a bumbling bank robber shows up.

 Swedish author Fredrik Backman has entertained readers worldwide, drawing them into fictional realms with ordinary people facing the absurdities of life and death. In Anxious People, he mines similar terrain, cleverly assembling an ensemble cast of characters, some of them utterly exasperating. He sets them in a darkly comic predicament that will challenge them as a group and personally, opening the story to larger themes about the foibles, pitfalls and traps of living.

 

Backman's construct is straightforward: an open-house apartment viewing. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, especially when a gun-wielding bank robber targets a cashless bank and winds up, through a series of mishaps, at the open house. In bumbling, snowballing desperation, the robber takes eight people, high-maintenance strangers at the viewing, hostage. When the robber ultimately escapes, two police officers--a father and son facing personal struggles of their own--investigate the crime and try to make sense of the who, how and why of this topsy-turvy, totally-gone-awry robbery scenario and all involved.

 

Backman (Us Against You) skillfully employs an omniscient narrative voice and short, focused chapters that unwind an intricate plot through interspersed--extremely telling and very funny--police interrogation scenes. Readers are kept off-balance by details of the hostage siege as characters reveal their personal dilemmas. This intensifies the narrative tension and drama, upping the literal and figurative anxiousness of the book's title. Backman's signature storytelling wit and wisdom--the way he unravels his puzzle while peeling back layers of complex relationships, personal burdens and secrets carried by all--enables this fresh, quirky, over-the-top comedy to coalesce into poignant profundity.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Atria, $28.00 Hardcover, 9781501160837, 352 pages

Publication Date: September 29, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (September 8, 2020), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (August 14, 2020), link HERE