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New Millennium Boyz
Brad Sela is living an apathetic suburban life in his affluent neighborhood until two new friends drag him down a destructive path toward self-discovery.
“My favorite millennial provocateur.” —Bret Easton Ellis , NYLON Magazine Must-Reads September 2023
“This book is raucous, raunchy, and sure to offend, and there are readers who’ll appreciate those things. I will forever defend Kazemi’s ability to write this book and entertain his intended audience against those who’d torch all three.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and a dozen other banned books
Freshly seventeen and entering his Y2K senior year, Brad is feeling fatigued by the cookie-cutter image his new-agey Oprah-loving mom and corporate-Boomer dad expect him to maintain, so when the new transfer students, Lu and Shane, invite him out to the woods, he agrees to see what this Baphomet-worshipping goth kid and classic-rock stoner have to offer.
“There's no way a robot wrote this book. A no-holds-barred tour of the Millennial mindset's spiritual DNA. Anything goes.” —Douglas Coupland
Soon, he’s dealing with the delicate balance of a double life, forsaking old friends for his new ones, and secretly embarking on a journey of indulging his darkest impulses—even documenting some of their most dangerous and disturbing exploits on their Handycams. But as their hijinks increase and threaten to expose him, Brad is forced to reconcile who he really is or risk drowning in his downward spiral.
“There is some twisted shit in this book that will likely fuck with your head and break your heart. Remember Woodstock ’99, and how a sick, profit-driven media culture pushed boys to their worst impulses? Think Larry Clark or Bret Easton Ellis by way of Charles Bukowski or J.G. Ballard. These kids are not all right. Kazemi’s prose produces the same visceral response as an early Tarantino movie. Proceed with caution.” —Douglas Rushkoff
At turns hair-raising and harrowing, Alex Kazemi’s thrilling debut novel is an unnerving examination of the collision of traditional masculinity, the early internet, and irresistible pop culture that shaped the turn of the century and transformed the way boys engage with the world. The bastard love child of Bret Easton Ellis and Gregg Araki, New Millennium Boyz presents an uncensored and unsettling portrait of the year 2000 that never could have aired on MTV.
“I walked a path parallel to my own, and it was honest, authentic and awful. New Millennium Boyz is an intrusively intimate narration of someone who lived in familiar coordinates yet a different social stratum. That wholly un-unique alienation and emptiness is one that fills me with a nostalgia for a past that was, and was not, my own.” —Brooks Brown, Columbine Survivor and Author
“In New Millennium Boyz , Alex Kazemi dissects the post-Columbine generation with wit and a sharp scalpel. His characters are damaged products of their time. While this is a dark chronicle, there's also a cozy High School Confidential feel to the tale and the various media Kazemi employs to tell it, resulting in a compulsively readable novel.” — Poppy Z. Brite
“Alex Kazemi is a boy wonder.” —Shirley Manson
“My favorite millennial provocateur.” —Bret Easton Ellis , NYLON Magazine Must-Reads September 2023
“This book is raucous, raunchy, and sure to offend, and there are readers who’ll appreciate those things. I will forever defend Kazemi’s ability to write this book and entertain his intended audience against those who’d torch all three.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and a dozen other banned books
Freshly seventeen and entering his Y2K senior year, Brad is feeling fatigued by the cookie-cutter image his new-agey Oprah-loving mom and corporate-Boomer dad expect him to maintain, so when the new transfer students, Lu and Shane, invite him out to the woods, he agrees to see what this Baphomet-worshipping goth kid and classic-rock stoner have to offer.
“There's no way a robot wrote this book. A no-holds-barred tour of the Millennial mindset's spiritual DNA. Anything goes.” —Douglas Coupland
Soon, he’s dealing with the delicate balance of a double life, forsaking old friends for his new ones, and secretly embarking on a journey of indulging his darkest impulses—even documenting some of their most dangerous and disturbing exploits on their Handycams. But as their hijinks increase and threaten to expose him, Brad is forced to reconcile who he really is or risk drowning in his downward spiral.
“There is some twisted shit in this book that will likely fuck with your head and break your heart. Remember Woodstock ’99, and how a sick, profit-driven media culture pushed boys to their worst impulses? Think Larry Clark or Bret Easton Ellis by way of Charles Bukowski or J.G. Ballard. These kids are not all right. Kazemi’s prose produces the same visceral response as an early Tarantino movie. Proceed with caution.” —Douglas Rushkoff
At turns hair-raising and harrowing, Alex Kazemi’s thrilling debut novel is an unnerving examination of the collision of traditional masculinity, the early internet, and irresistible pop culture that shaped the turn of the century and transformed the way boys engage with the world. The bastard love child of Bret Easton Ellis and Gregg Araki, New Millennium Boyz presents an uncensored and unsettling portrait of the year 2000 that never could have aired on MTV.
“I walked a path parallel to my own, and it was honest, authentic and awful. New Millennium Boyz is an intrusively intimate narration of someone who lived in familiar coordinates yet a different social stratum. That wholly un-unique alienation and emptiness is one that fills me with a nostalgia for a past that was, and was not, my own.” —Brooks Brown, Columbine Survivor and Author
“In New Millennium Boyz , Alex Kazemi dissects the post-Columbine generation with wit and a sharp scalpel. His characters are damaged products of their time. While this is a dark chronicle, there's also a cozy High School Confidential feel to the tale and the various media Kazemi employs to tell it, resulting in a compulsively readable novel.” — Poppy Z. Brite
“Alex Kazemi is a boy wonder.” —Shirley Manson
352 pages, Hardcover
Published September 12, 2023
31 people are currently reading
1635 people want to read
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May 14, 2024
As culturally awash in irreverence and irony as it was clothed in stonewash jeans, what better way to tap into spirit on the 1990s US youth scene than to harness the profane towards something profound. Alex Kazemi’s sardonically satirical New Millenium Boyz comes violently alive as a 90s period piece—I’m sorry to anyone who may have grimaced thinking of the 90s as long enough ago for such a thing—that drags you through the darkness of the foul-mouthed, cynical toxic masculinity of an era right as the Columbine massacre is sending shockwaves through the country. This book, which has been targeted by book banners, is shocking itself, though the almost suffocating depictions of misogyny, homophobia and crass cruelty never feels played for shock value but rather an damning indictment of how such rampant vulgarity was normalized in many corners of society and only festered in its own filth as the expansion of internet access gave it a wider outlet. Dark and gruesome, New Millennium Boyz won’t be for everyone, nor does it need to be and—truthfully—there were times where the bluntness of its brutality had me questioning if it was even for me but I can’t deny I was strongly impacted by this and that the discomfort is part of the understand. Kazemi successfully captures the dark side of the 90s and pulls off a satirical cultural indictment in a novel that has created a bit of a scandal but ultimately reminds us to reject a toxic masculinity that teaches ‘caring is so embarrassing,’ or a romanticization of apathy and cruelty.
Before we go any further, I’d like to thank Permuted Press for providing me with a copy in exchange for a review and also apologize for my absurd tardiness in reviewing the book. I’d like to claim I was just being an unaffected cool 90s kid who didn’t believe in timelines but the truth is I’m trash at actually doing anything I should be reviewing. But I was intrigued when I saw the novel had been blurbed by Bret Easton Ellis as ‘my favorite millennial provocateur.’ This is high praise from someone who has notably feuded with Millennials in the press, such as saying ‘what is millennial culture? … It kind of disturbs me,’ in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in 2019 before stating ‘where is the great millennial novel? There isn’t one.’ It seemed Ellis has now found one he can smile upon, and it is a smart blurb as it may seem lazy to compare this to Ellis’ works like American Psycho—especially for the ever present immersion in pop culture, darkness, and violence in both books—but it’s also an accurate and productive comparison. I’m glad I read this as it isn’t one I’d probably have reached for, but I recall a time as a teen living amongst peers that talked and acted like many of the teens in this book and it would have fit right into the sort of “edgy” media I was consuming then.
What Kazemi does best is truly capture the vibes of the 90s, from the turmoil to the feelings of rapid change amidst great prosperity that tried to push aside the lower class while romanticizing being tough, edgy and disaffected. It was a time where the term “alternative” reigned supreme with Alternative music, alternative tv networks like MTV, alternatives to everything as the internet opened up access and going “against the grain” became the cool thing to do. Kazemi spent 10 years working on this novel, largely honing his skills to recreate the speech of teen boys and that comes across quite effectively. And while it is very pop-culture heavy—referencing the current culture was HUGE in the 90s—it isn’t kids saying “eat my shorts!” shouting “booyah” or saying “talk to the hand” but leaning in to the 90s cynicism of being as crass and profane as possible. This is the culture that made Bob Saget famous for saying the filthiest things possible, mind you, and whew the dialogue is indeed foul. You've been warned, but its presented this way for a much greater purpose than mere crassness.
I took a college course once on how media and culture reflect each other where I learned how the popular performance art of any era is a gold mine for cultural artifacts and commentary on values of that decade. I recall a lecture on the 90s leaning heavily on how shows like Seinfeld or Friends marked a shift from family-based sitcoms to one of “found family,” or how Seinfeld takes a rather mocking tone towards people outside their group and a lot of jokes barbed against ideas of inauthenticity. But we also have MTV, heavily present in this novel, which glamorized the lifestyles of the rich and famous while also bringing shows like Jackass which popularized pranks and handycam antics. The show featured a lot of fairly mean-spirited humor and people getting hurt for laughs, a social acceptance that Kazemi’s characters are intensely aware of. The character Lu, for instance, is never without his camera always hoping for the moment that will be his big break. It's through these cultural references we get to the heart of the issues. Kazemi spoke on this in an interview with Document Journal recently:
In the 90s it was the epitome of cool to be disaffected, ironic, self-referential and cynical with music and movies glamorizing the idea of the “cool loser” (Beck song Loser is very indicative of white culture at the time). Being authentic and “not a poser” or “a sellout” was championed. This image was something corporate marketing teams staffed by Boomers were pushing on teens, capturing the idea that sex and violence sells but then turning around and shaming teens for being too sexualized, too violent, too cynical and “ruining the national morality” sort of thing. It’s like in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat's Cradle where in order to control people they invent a religion and then ban it in order to ensure everyone will want to practice it in private rebellion.
I grew up too late to be amongst these characters, but I recognize in them the culture my friend’s older siblings lived in. ‘We romanticize that era for its simple truths,’ Kazemi says, ‘but there’s so much darkness in it.’ It was a time of great growth but also turmoil, which we can see in hindsight how the unsustainability of the era smashed its face into a brick wall of the new millennium as the dot com and housing bubbles burst and 9/11 changed everything. That spiral towards an inevitable bad end can be felt on every page here though. The story of New Millennium Boyz follows Brad as he realizes the normalcy of suburban life is always teetering on the edge of a cesspit of violence and debauchery. ‘What is the fucking point of being alive if my life doesn’t fit the vision I have of myself in my mind,’ he wonders and sets out to seek a fulfilling life. After a teen-movie-trope summer of camp, finding a sweet girlfriend and losing his virginity suddenly gives way to something more like a punk music video as he befriends Marilyn Manson-worshiping Shane and nihilistic Lu (which is either short for Luke or Lucifer) who will do anything to shock the system. But leading a double life of polite Brad and Badboy Brad becomes to much as the trio descend as far as possible beyond decency in hopes of overnight fame.
‘I’m becoming a prophet, an icon, and I don’t even have to move to Hollywood.’
What occurs is rather alarming and while it has shock value it is using the shock to expose and criticize. ‘I think that it could be interpreted that like, I just wrote a bunch of shock porn,’ Kazemi admits in an interview with Daily Beast, ‘But I think if you zoom out, I’m trying to talk about the escalation of the behavior and a culture that is sort of encouraging their worst impulses.’ If media and culture reflect each other back to each other, what we find here is a feedback loop amplifying itself into an ear piercing pitch of violence and cruelty that became so embedded in toxic masculinity.
You’ll remember exactly why it has become so necessary for a social pushback against misogyny, racism, homophobia and all the various bigotries that casually spew from the mouths of these characters. Not that times are perfect now, but it is unsettling to remember just how accurate the horrible language was even when I was in high school. And just using homophobic slurs so casually as a general insult. I’m also reminded of a song from the 90s from Third Eye Blind (who apparently are still a thing based on my google search just now) called Slow Motion. Deemed too vulgar to make the album—their album Blue contained an instrumental version that I liked to play on guitar with a friend who played the piano parts—the lyric version that appeared online does make me think of this book. The song is a litany of horrors, drugs and violence but ends as so:
Much in this way we see how this descent into the worst of human impulses are misguided teens internalizing media in a harmful way. After Columbine, which is present in the novel, everyone was quick to blame video games and music. ‘The Columbine era destroyed my entire career at the time,’ singer Marilyn Manson has said in interviews, his music largely being targeted as a “cause” of the violence. Much debate ensued at the time if media caused violence or exacerbated violent urges in kids and many concerts were cancelled. Mason argued this unfair blame only made it worse for kids who were already bullied for being different.
Similarly, author Stephen King’s novel Rage, which he wrote in high school about a school shooting, was found to be on the reading list of multiple school shooters and lead him to discontinue publication of the book saying:
I bring this up because New Millennium Boyz has been found to be rather controversial, landing on book ban lists and being flagged by conservative content review website BookLooks—which is associated with the group the SPLC deemed a “hate group”, Moms For Liberty— as “a 5/5 aberrant content rating” with a 33-page document of pull-quotes as to why (read more on this here). The issue here is that representation is not the same as condoning and as already discussed the troubling aspects of the novel are intended to capture the ideas in order to criticize them, or, as Kazemi said in Interview Magazine, ‘there’s no sense of glamorization about any of it. I’m actually exposing it and reprimanding it.’ Which feels adjacent to the idea that media depicting violence begets violence and poses the question if representation of bigotry in order to push back against bigotry thereby begets bigotry.
A rather intense and uncomfortable book but for the sake of using the discomfort to examine a much more uncomfortable and violent cultural issue of the 90s, New Millennium Boyz is certainly a very affecting novel that achieves its goals. Rife with pop-culture references and a selection of songs that would rival any I Love the 90s CD, this plunges the reader through a horrific ride of 90s culture and cynicism where you can practically taste the soda-can bongs stuck with a needle everyone was smoking out of behind the high school. Thank you to Permuted Press for a chance to read and review.
⅘
Before we go any further, I’d like to thank Permuted Press for providing me with a copy in exchange for a review and also apologize for my absurd tardiness in reviewing the book. I’d like to claim I was just being an unaffected cool 90s kid who didn’t believe in timelines but the truth is I’m trash at actually doing anything I should be reviewing. But I was intrigued when I saw the novel had been blurbed by Bret Easton Ellis as ‘my favorite millennial provocateur.’ This is high praise from someone who has notably feuded with Millennials in the press, such as saying ‘what is millennial culture? … It kind of disturbs me,’ in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in 2019 before stating ‘where is the great millennial novel? There isn’t one.’ It seemed Ellis has now found one he can smile upon, and it is a smart blurb as it may seem lazy to compare this to Ellis’ works like American Psycho—especially for the ever present immersion in pop culture, darkness, and violence in both books—but it’s also an accurate and productive comparison. I’m glad I read this as it isn’t one I’d probably have reached for, but I recall a time as a teen living amongst peers that talked and acted like many of the teens in this book and it would have fit right into the sort of “edgy” media I was consuming then.
What Kazemi does best is truly capture the vibes of the 90s, from the turmoil to the feelings of rapid change amidst great prosperity that tried to push aside the lower class while romanticizing being tough, edgy and disaffected. It was a time where the term “alternative” reigned supreme with Alternative music, alternative tv networks like MTV, alternatives to everything as the internet opened up access and going “against the grain” became the cool thing to do. Kazemi spent 10 years working on this novel, largely honing his skills to recreate the speech of teen boys and that comes across quite effectively. And while it is very pop-culture heavy—referencing the current culture was HUGE in the 90s—it isn’t kids saying “eat my shorts!” shouting “booyah” or saying “talk to the hand” but leaning in to the 90s cynicism of being as crass and profane as possible. This is the culture that made Bob Saget famous for saying the filthiest things possible, mind you, and whew the dialogue is indeed foul. You've been warned, but its presented this way for a much greater purpose than mere crassness.
I took a college course once on how media and culture reflect each other where I learned how the popular performance art of any era is a gold mine for cultural artifacts and commentary on values of that decade. I recall a lecture on the 90s leaning heavily on how shows like Seinfeld or Friends marked a shift from family-based sitcoms to one of “found family,” or how Seinfeld takes a rather mocking tone towards people outside their group and a lot of jokes barbed against ideas of inauthenticity. But we also have MTV, heavily present in this novel, which glamorized the lifestyles of the rich and famous while also bringing shows like Jackass which popularized pranks and handycam antics. The show featured a lot of fairly mean-spirited humor and people getting hurt for laughs, a social acceptance that Kazemi’s characters are intensely aware of. The character Lu, for instance, is never without his camera always hoping for the moment that will be his big break. It's through these cultural references we get to the heart of the issues. Kazemi spoke on this in an interview with Document Journal recently:
‘ I wanted to mock and satirize, and pop culture became a vehicle to do that. Obviously, I take it to such an absurdist, exhausting degree to depict how brainwashed millennials were by corporate Boomer pop culture.’
In the 90s it was the epitome of cool to be disaffected, ironic, self-referential and cynical with music and movies glamorizing the idea of the “cool loser” (Beck song Loser is very indicative of white culture at the time). Being authentic and “not a poser” or “a sellout” was championed. This image was something corporate marketing teams staffed by Boomers were pushing on teens, capturing the idea that sex and violence sells but then turning around and shaming teens for being too sexualized, too violent, too cynical and “ruining the national morality” sort of thing. It’s like in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat's Cradle where in order to control people they invent a religion and then ban it in order to ensure everyone will want to practice it in private rebellion.
I grew up too late to be amongst these characters, but I recognize in them the culture my friend’s older siblings lived in. ‘We romanticize that era for its simple truths,’ Kazemi says, ‘but there’s so much darkness in it.’ It was a time of great growth but also turmoil, which we can see in hindsight how the unsustainability of the era smashed its face into a brick wall of the new millennium as the dot com and housing bubbles burst and 9/11 changed everything. That spiral towards an inevitable bad end can be felt on every page here though. The story of New Millennium Boyz follows Brad as he realizes the normalcy of suburban life is always teetering on the edge of a cesspit of violence and debauchery. ‘What is the fucking point of being alive if my life doesn’t fit the vision I have of myself in my mind,’ he wonders and sets out to seek a fulfilling life. After a teen-movie-trope summer of camp, finding a sweet girlfriend and losing his virginity suddenly gives way to something more like a punk music video as he befriends Marilyn Manson-worshiping Shane and nihilistic Lu (which is either short for Luke or Lucifer) who will do anything to shock the system. But leading a double life of polite Brad and Badboy Brad becomes to much as the trio descend as far as possible beyond decency in hopes of overnight fame.
‘I’m becoming a prophet, an icon, and I don’t even have to move to Hollywood.’
What occurs is rather alarming and while it has shock value it is using the shock to expose and criticize. ‘I think that it could be interpreted that like, I just wrote a bunch of shock porn,’ Kazemi admits in an interview with Daily Beast, ‘But I think if you zoom out, I’m trying to talk about the escalation of the behavior and a culture that is sort of encouraging their worst impulses.’ If media and culture reflect each other back to each other, what we find here is a feedback loop amplifying itself into an ear piercing pitch of violence and cruelty that became so embedded in toxic masculinity.
‘I think, because a lot of my generation likes to romanticize goth culture—Manson, Nine Inch Nails and stuff—I wanted to expose it for being just another aspect of the ‘bro’ culture. You know, just cause Manson was wearing lipstick and all, it doesn’t change the fact that he was a part of that very male culture.’
You’ll remember exactly why it has become so necessary for a social pushback against misogyny, racism, homophobia and all the various bigotries that casually spew from the mouths of these characters. Not that times are perfect now, but it is unsettling to remember just how accurate the horrible language was even when I was in high school. And just using homophobic slurs so casually as a general insult. I’m also reminded of a song from the 90s from Third Eye Blind (who apparently are still a thing based on my google search just now) called Slow Motion. Deemed too vulgar to make the album—their album Blue contained an instrumental version that I liked to play on guitar with a friend who played the piano parts—the lyric version that appeared online does make me think of this book. The song is a litany of horrors, drugs and violence but ends as so:
’Hollywood glamorized my wrath
I'm the young urban psychopath
I incite murder
For your entertainment
'Cause I needed the money
What's your excuse?
The jokes on you’
Much in this way we see how this descent into the worst of human impulses are misguided teens internalizing media in a harmful way. After Columbine, which is present in the novel, everyone was quick to blame video games and music. ‘The Columbine era destroyed my entire career at the time,’ singer Marilyn Manson has said in interviews, his music largely being targeted as a “cause” of the violence. Much debate ensued at the time if media caused violence or exacerbated violent urges in kids and many concerts were cancelled. Mason argued this unfair blame only made it worse for kids who were already bullied for being different.
‘The media has unfairly scapegoated the music industry and so-called Goth kids and has speculated, with no basis in truth, that artists like myself are in some way to blame. This tragedy was a product of ignorance, hatred and an access to guns. I hope the media's irresponsible finger-pointing doesn't create more discrimination against kids who look different.’
Similarly, author Stephen King’s novel Rage, which he wrote in high school about a school shooting, was found to be on the reading list of multiple school shooters and lead him to discontinue publication of the book saying:
‘My book did not break [these teenagers] or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them, because they were already broken…Yet I did see ‘Rage’ as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.’
I bring this up because New Millennium Boyz has been found to be rather controversial, landing on book ban lists and being flagged by conservative content review website BookLooks—which is associated with the group the SPLC deemed a “hate group”, Moms For Liberty— as “a 5/5 aberrant content rating” with a 33-page document of pull-quotes as to why (read more on this here). The issue here is that representation is not the same as condoning and as already discussed the troubling aspects of the novel are intended to capture the ideas in order to criticize them, or, as Kazemi said in Interview Magazine, ‘there’s no sense of glamorization about any of it. I’m actually exposing it and reprimanding it.’ Which feels adjacent to the idea that media depicting violence begets violence and poses the question if representation of bigotry in order to push back against bigotry thereby begets bigotry.
A rather intense and uncomfortable book but for the sake of using the discomfort to examine a much more uncomfortable and violent cultural issue of the 90s, New Millennium Boyz is certainly a very affecting novel that achieves its goals. Rife with pop-culture references and a selection of songs that would rival any I Love the 90s CD, this plunges the reader through a horrific ride of 90s culture and cynicism where you can practically taste the soda-can bongs stuck with a needle everyone was smoking out of behind the high school. Thank you to Permuted Press for a chance to read and review.
⅘
September 16, 2023
Personally didn’t enjoy this - while I understand the era and culture it tries to emulate, it really didn’t work in execution for me. A lot of the dialogue felt oversaturated with pop culture references and lacked nuance, and several instances with unattributed dialogue felt difficult to follow since the tone is so similar throughout. It just resulted in this feeling dense and repetitive rather than a snapshot of an iconic time period. I had trouble getting through this
I was torn about writing a review for this given I try avoid negative reviews about ARCs (given sometimes it’s just a matter of the book not aligning with expectations, or not being the right target audience).
But to be blunt my experiences working with the publishing team were less than ideal for a variety of reasons and largely felt transactional. Though for the majority of ARC readers, reading is just a hobby, I do think it’s still important for publishing staff to proceed with professionalism and respect when dealing with them. It is awesome to receive a free book, but also requires time and effort to read and review - so it is a two way street. Hearing negative comments about other reviewers specifically left a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully this acts as a learning experience and moving forward other reviewers have more positive feedback to give!
I was torn about writing a review for this given I try avoid negative reviews about ARCs (given sometimes it’s just a matter of the book not aligning with expectations, or not being the right target audience).
But to be blunt my experiences working with the publishing team were less than ideal for a variety of reasons and largely felt transactional. Though for the majority of ARC readers, reading is just a hobby, I do think it’s still important for publishing staff to proceed with professionalism and respect when dealing with them. It is awesome to receive a free book, but also requires time and effort to read and review - so it is a two way street. Hearing negative comments about other reviewers specifically left a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully this acts as a learning experience and moving forward other reviewers have more positive feedback to give!
January 31, 2024
READ A PREVIEW VIA DENNIS COOPER'S BLOG
NOW BANNED BY EXTREME-RIGHT CONSERVATIVE BOOK BAN GROUP 'MOMS4LIBERTY/' + BookLooks.org AND ON THEIR OFFICIAL LIST
I received an ARC for this book and all I can say is how exciting it is to have this text in the world. Overall if a text is supposed to make me feel something this made me feel the most disgusted appalled and outright nauseous I’ve ever felt. It truly is something you wouldn’t see on TV. Perhaps my reaction is because I grew up in a Gen Z environment and didn’t experience the way the boys in this book grew up. It’s a cautionary tale to other generations of what apathy can do and why the past shouldn’t be romanticized.
I can’t believe how badly this shocked me. This story is not wrappped up in a pretty bow. Brad Sela is so unlikeable. I’ve never read a book with a more unlikeable narrator. This book made me cry at the frustration I felt, at how vulgar, racist, homophobic and misogynistic these boys are. It’s intersting because if I were to replace the ‘MTV’ words with ‘TIKTOK’ it’d be the same context as everyone wants to be famous as fuck these days. The imagery life in the book is very strong.
I rushed myself to read it so I could get out of the painful haze this book put me in. I felt right there with the characters. This whole book felt like I was duct taped to a chair and forced to watch a snuff film. Once I started it there was no way I could stop halfway through. I wanted see what happens to everyone. The relationships felt real and true and there’s a lot of good one line zingers in here which must be calculated and crafted but seem natural. The amount of violence and hatred is awful. I feel like I need to sage myself after this read. For real. I can’t believe that these are the boys who are now men in their late 30’s, perhaps in positions of leadership. If this is what y2k felt like I never wanna go back and celebrate it. Everyone was so obssessed with image and aesthetic back then. It’s the same now too. Humans haven’t matured much. Only the technology has matured.
NOW BANNED BY EXTREME-RIGHT CONSERVATIVE BOOK BAN GROUP 'MOMS4LIBERTY/' + BookLooks.org AND ON THEIR OFFICIAL LIST
I received an ARC for this book and all I can say is how exciting it is to have this text in the world. Overall if a text is supposed to make me feel something this made me feel the most disgusted appalled and outright nauseous I’ve ever felt. It truly is something you wouldn’t see on TV. Perhaps my reaction is because I grew up in a Gen Z environment and didn’t experience the way the boys in this book grew up. It’s a cautionary tale to other generations of what apathy can do and why the past shouldn’t be romanticized.
I can’t believe how badly this shocked me. This story is not wrappped up in a pretty bow. Brad Sela is so unlikeable. I’ve never read a book with a more unlikeable narrator. This book made me cry at the frustration I felt, at how vulgar, racist, homophobic and misogynistic these boys are. It’s intersting because if I were to replace the ‘MTV’ words with ‘TIKTOK’ it’d be the same context as everyone wants to be famous as fuck these days. The imagery life in the book is very strong.
I rushed myself to read it so I could get out of the painful haze this book put me in. I felt right there with the characters. This whole book felt like I was duct taped to a chair and forced to watch a snuff film. Once I started it there was no way I could stop halfway through. I wanted see what happens to everyone. The relationships felt real and true and there’s a lot of good one line zingers in here which must be calculated and crafted but seem natural. The amount of violence and hatred is awful. I feel like I need to sage myself after this read. For real. I can’t believe that these are the boys who are now men in their late 30’s, perhaps in positions of leadership. If this is what y2k felt like I never wanna go back and celebrate it. Everyone was so obssessed with image and aesthetic back then. It’s the same now too. Humans haven’t matured much. Only the technology has matured.
July 19, 2024
2.0 Stars
Video Review https://youtu.be/ylbSUYXdIsI
This book is compared to the works of Bret Easton Ellis, who has become one of my favourite authors. I can certainly see why. This novel captures a particular time period through the lense of privileged characters.
On a surface level, the comparison is there, but this novel falls short in terms of its execution. My biggest issue was the writing. I was hoping for a biting tight narrative and instead found weaker prose, filled with amatuer dialog.
Also I found the characters to be flat. I was fully expecting unlikeable characters so that was no issue, but I wanted them to be interesting.
The premise had so much potential but unfortunately I had a rough time with this one.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
Video Review https://youtu.be/ylbSUYXdIsI
This book is compared to the works of Bret Easton Ellis, who has become one of my favourite authors. I can certainly see why. This novel captures a particular time period through the lense of privileged characters.
On a surface level, the comparison is there, but this novel falls short in terms of its execution. My biggest issue was the writing. I was hoping for a biting tight narrative and instead found weaker prose, filled with amatuer dialog.
Also I found the characters to be flat. I was fully expecting unlikeable characters so that was no issue, but I wanted them to be interesting.
The premise had so much potential but unfortunately I had a rough time with this one.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2023
i hate men. i will always hate men. but there is something so wonderful about reading this novel as a lesbian with feminine rage. you reap what you sow, brad sela.
it's the late 90's. brad goes to summer camp and meets a girl, aurora, he truly cares about. after the summer, he writes to her in an open and honest way. however, his behaviors and actions are absolutely rancid.
brad and his "friends" get into the dark sexual parts of the internet post-columbine. they start doing copious amounts of drugs, torturing people (people of color, disabled people, teenage girls, teenage boys, animals, anybody), and being deviant pieces of shit. it's dark, it's rank, and the more i read, the more i drank. and i read it in one sitting.
filled with 90's nostalgia, this book makes me so fucking happy i was born in 1999. i've always had so much love for the 90's and kazemi captured the time period perfectly. this is the toxic teenage boy anthem. the scum of the earth fuckboy incel manifesto.
and yet, it's so human. do we not all wonder what we could be pushed to in the terms of harming others? i have never hurt animal nor human and i am by default a nonviolent nonbinary being. but, fuck, i want to take a switchblade to these boys, brad included.
what is the most sick thing about this novel is that you keep reading it. you want to beat the fuck out of these boys, yet you keep reading about their abuse and injustice. and you know what? actions have consequences.
so, yes, i hate the characters of this novel, but kazemi's satirical writing makes it addictive. i didn't enjoy this novel, and you won't either, but that sick feeling you get when you reach the end alone warrants five stars. it's fucked up, but it's a purposeful fucked up. if you want to hate the world and everything in it, read this book. maybe the 90's weren't so great after all.
when it comes to the ending — i think the tapes were worse than anything we saw in the text, and what we saw was so fucked up that whatever was on those tapes had to be BAD BAD BAD. think "shut up and dance" from black mirror bad. but worse. it was a tasteful way of not showing extreme violence while also implying that there are worse horrors than what was shown. and like, tbh, it's icky as hell, but i didn't feel bad for brad in the slightest. i definitely had the nasty reaction of like "fuck you, kill yourself." i think not showing what's on the tapes gives you a little moment to maybe, possibly, feel bad for brad. like "oh he's a good kid, he just got roped into this shit." but holy shit i did not. fuck that guy. world's a better place without him. as toxic as it is to think that, actions have consequences. just because you feel bad NOW doesn't mean that you didn't do those things in the first place.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review. men r trash.
it's the late 90's. brad goes to summer camp and meets a girl, aurora, he truly cares about. after the summer, he writes to her in an open and honest way. however, his behaviors and actions are absolutely rancid.
brad and his "friends" get into the dark sexual parts of the internet post-columbine. they start doing copious amounts of drugs, torturing people (people of color, disabled people, teenage girls, teenage boys, animals, anybody), and being deviant pieces of shit. it's dark, it's rank, and the more i read, the more i drank. and i read it in one sitting.
filled with 90's nostalgia, this book makes me so fucking happy i was born in 1999. i've always had so much love for the 90's and kazemi captured the time period perfectly. this is the toxic teenage boy anthem. the scum of the earth fuckboy incel manifesto.
and yet, it's so human. do we not all wonder what we could be pushed to in the terms of harming others? i have never hurt animal nor human and i am by default a nonviolent nonbinary being. but, fuck, i want to take a switchblade to these boys, brad included.
what is the most sick thing about this novel is that you keep reading it. you want to beat the fuck out of these boys, yet you keep reading about their abuse and injustice. and you know what? actions have consequences.
so, yes, i hate the characters of this novel, but kazemi's satirical writing makes it addictive. i didn't enjoy this novel, and you won't either, but that sick feeling you get when you reach the end alone warrants five stars. it's fucked up, but it's a purposeful fucked up. if you want to hate the world and everything in it, read this book. maybe the 90's weren't so great after all.
when it comes to the ending — i think the tapes were worse than anything we saw in the text, and what we saw was so fucked up that whatever was on those tapes had to be BAD BAD BAD. think "shut up and dance" from black mirror bad. but worse. it was a tasteful way of not showing extreme violence while also implying that there are worse horrors than what was shown. and like, tbh, it's icky as hell, but i didn't feel bad for brad in the slightest. i definitely had the nasty reaction of like "fuck you, kill yourself." i think not showing what's on the tapes gives you a little moment to maybe, possibly, feel bad for brad. like "oh he's a good kid, he just got roped into this shit." but holy shit i did not. fuck that guy. world's a better place without him. as toxic as it is to think that, actions have consequences. just because you feel bad NOW doesn't mean that you didn't do those things in the first place.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review. men r trash.
Read
August 23, 2023“I feel like I swallowed the jizz of a lake monster.”
DNF @ 20%
The year is 1999, I was a weird teenager, and on the cusp of entering high school. The millennium couldn’t come soon enough because I was ready to be the strange pink-haired high schooler. Then it happened and it was over before I knew it.
I was excited to read this book. It sounded like something I would absolutely enjoy but it just wasn’t what I was thinking. This book was really messed up and that’s coming from me. I read a lot of fucked up things but this one was different. The dialogue wasn’t believable (not sure if I know anyone who has ever spoken like these characters have) and all the characters were nauseating.
I can say that I tried. It just wasn’t for me but I’m sure others will enjoy this.
DNF @ 20%
The year is 1999, I was a weird teenager, and on the cusp of entering high school. The millennium couldn’t come soon enough because I was ready to be the strange pink-haired high schooler. Then it happened and it was over before I knew it.
I was excited to read this book. It sounded like something I would absolutely enjoy but it just wasn’t what I was thinking. This book was really messed up and that’s coming from me. I read a lot of fucked up things but this one was different. The dialogue wasn’t believable (not sure if I know anyone who has ever spoken like these characters have) and all the characters were nauseating.
I can say that I tried. It just wasn’t for me but I’m sure others will enjoy this.
August 3, 2024
Apparently my previous review for this book was taken down, so I’ll write a more honest one: I read the first like 20 pages and it was really boring.
September 2, 2023
It takes cojones of a certain size to write this sort of book, when the template has long been transformed into a Holy Grail by Brett Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland. Not to mention iconic movies like ‘Elephant’ by Gus van Sant, ‘Kids’ by Larry Clark, and the entire slacker oeuvre of Kevin Smith. (Though I will rather stick toothpicks under my own nails than attempt to watch HBO’s ‘Euphoria’.)
Coupland’s ‘Generation X’ (1991, the subtitle of which is ‘Tales for an Accelerated Culture’), put the official stamp on my blip on the generational timeline (I was born in 1969.) Then I saw that Mark McCrindle’s ‘Generation Alpha’ (those born 2010 to 2024) was published earlier this year.
It all seems grist to the inter-generational mill, meaning that young, dark horse writers like Alex Kazemi (29) will always be writing books like this that seem to serve more as a warning to the next generation about the sociocultural toxicity seeping in from previous generation. Is it a cycle we are ever going to be able to break?
We are already getting official studies like ‘Mental health and wellbeing of children and adolescents during the Covid-19 pandemic’ in BMJ (2021), which points out that half of mental health disorders (including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and others) start by age 14, and three quarters by age 24. That is a truly frightening statistic.
Considering the potential scale of that looming mental health crisis for an entire generation, do we really need (yet another) book like ‘New Millennium Boyz’ (both the ‘new’ and the ‘z’ are semiotic indicators of a particular sense of ironic detachment, combined with a nostalgic yearning for commodification, that seems to have permeated the 90s.)
The decade commenced with Mandela being released from prison on 11 February 1990 and was book-ended by the Columbine High School massacre on 20 April 1999. Chuck Klosterman notes in ‘The Nineties’ that Facebook was launched in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and Instagram in 2010.
The (now rather quaint seeming) AOL and CompuServe ‘chatrooms’ of the 1990s were light years away from how social media has both mediated and altered the discourse around individual and collective identity and freedom in the 2000s – especially now that we’re at an unknown tipping point thanks to the Pandora’s Box opened by AI. Klosterman notes:
It was possible, perhaps as late as 1995, to view the internet as only an extension of computer technology. By the end of the decade, the internet operated as its own form of mass media, with computers merely serving as the host.
It was a profound change that continues to reverberate in the Western world, the full implications of which were not even dreamed of in the 1990s. It tends to colour the decade with rose-tinted nostalgia – Kazemi’s main point, I think, is to warn against the danger of such nostalgia. It not only blinkers us but puts up inter-generational fences and stymies us from nurturing empathy and enlightenment as indispensable societal traits.
My favourite scene, and perhaps the most whimsical, is 18% into the ebook:
Santana’s ‘Smooth’ plays outside my window. I slide the blinds to the side and look down on the backyard deck. My mom’s Tupperware group is gathered around the table, passing around a bottle of wine.
The generational disconnect here is palpable. I do not want to give too much away, but Brad’s social-climbing mom is afforded significant agency at the end. It is an unexpected turn that, I suspect, is going to polarise readers. (It certainly changed my rating from 3 to 5 stars.)
It is an emotionally valid and surprisingly resonant ending that casts the events of the book in a much harsher light than the romantic glow of nostalgia – again, in line with Kazemi’s argument that the biggest impact on the present is our viewpoint of the past. Change that, and you can change the future. Or at least make it that much more bearable.
Of course, it might seem disingenuous or even disrespectful to suggest that a horrific event like Columbine can be perceived with any sense of nostalgia. The characters in ‘New Millennium Boyz’ certainly do, obsessing about what the killers wore, whether they went to Burger King or McDonald’s prior to the shooting, and what videos they watched.
Interestingly, Kazemi refers to ‘hybristophilia’, which Bing tells me “is a paraphilia involving sexual interest in and attraction to those who commit crimes.” I think such fetishisation only became possible when social media reached a nadir in the 2000s and allowed entire swathes of people to fall down rabbit holes of their making.
These people effectively live in alternate realities shaped by their paranoia and complete disassociation from what decoloniality refers to as the human Commons, “the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth.”
It is the literal antithesis of the stereotyped Columbine anti-hero lurking in a basement playing video games, eating Cheerios, watching porn (if the internet connection was fast enough), and plotting the downfall of humanity. Or at least their own school. However, Kazemi warns that to label his characters as ‘anti-heroes’ is, indeed, to fall into the trap of retrospective nostalgia.
Interestingly, Kazemi refers to ‘consumerism’, a buzzword of the 1990s, as opposed to our current obsession with capitalism as a system and its contribution to toxic masculinity and gender stereotyping. Selfish, self-centred behaviour is part and parcel of ‘manning up’ enough to climb the capitalist ladder to economic and patriarchal success.
It is a paradigm that was already being firmly entrenched in the 1990s, which ultimately makes ‘New Millennium Boyz’ such a sad read. A lot of attention is probably going to focus on some of the more gratuitous and lurid content (the Y2K pre-apocalypse setpiece is both Dionysian and intensely grubby.)
My sole caveat is that the book really needs a listing of organisations, helplines, or general resources that troubled youth can turn to if need be. We never know what intervention, no matter how small or random, is likely to save a single life or an entire community from tragedy.) This would have been far more effective than the rather lame ‘content warning’ that the publisher tags onto the beginning.
But these are the times we live in, and it is certainly brave for Kazemi to have pursued this project over such a long time of his own personal blogging career (and familiarity with controversy.) I also disagree with the editorial decision to asterisk out a particular swearword. But, again, these are perilous times for free speech and authorial ownership.
I just hope that the brouhaha this book will inevitably cause (I can just hear people ask: Where was the ‘sensitivity reader?’ while Kazemi was scribbling his depraved filth) does not overshadow his powerful message: The kids are not all right.
They haven’t been for a long time, and still aren’t, despite our more enlightened age (more woke, right wing, and reactionary; who would have seen that curveball coming in the 1990s?) And it is our collective responsibility to help each other navigate an uncertain future to leave a legacy that, in all probability, will be flawed and marred but that will tell our children’s children: We survived.
Coupland’s ‘Generation X’ (1991, the subtitle of which is ‘Tales for an Accelerated Culture’), put the official stamp on my blip on the generational timeline (I was born in 1969.) Then I saw that Mark McCrindle’s ‘Generation Alpha’ (those born 2010 to 2024) was published earlier this year.
It all seems grist to the inter-generational mill, meaning that young, dark horse writers like Alex Kazemi (29) will always be writing books like this that seem to serve more as a warning to the next generation about the sociocultural toxicity seeping in from previous generation. Is it a cycle we are ever going to be able to break?
We are already getting official studies like ‘Mental health and wellbeing of children and adolescents during the Covid-19 pandemic’ in BMJ (2021), which points out that half of mental health disorders (including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and others) start by age 14, and three quarters by age 24. That is a truly frightening statistic.
Considering the potential scale of that looming mental health crisis for an entire generation, do we really need (yet another) book like ‘New Millennium Boyz’ (both the ‘new’ and the ‘z’ are semiotic indicators of a particular sense of ironic detachment, combined with a nostalgic yearning for commodification, that seems to have permeated the 90s.)
The decade commenced with Mandela being released from prison on 11 February 1990 and was book-ended by the Columbine High School massacre on 20 April 1999. Chuck Klosterman notes in ‘The Nineties’ that Facebook was launched in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and Instagram in 2010.
The (now rather quaint seeming) AOL and CompuServe ‘chatrooms’ of the 1990s were light years away from how social media has both mediated and altered the discourse around individual and collective identity and freedom in the 2000s – especially now that we’re at an unknown tipping point thanks to the Pandora’s Box opened by AI. Klosterman notes:
It was possible, perhaps as late as 1995, to view the internet as only an extension of computer technology. By the end of the decade, the internet operated as its own form of mass media, with computers merely serving as the host.
It was a profound change that continues to reverberate in the Western world, the full implications of which were not even dreamed of in the 1990s. It tends to colour the decade with rose-tinted nostalgia – Kazemi’s main point, I think, is to warn against the danger of such nostalgia. It not only blinkers us but puts up inter-generational fences and stymies us from nurturing empathy and enlightenment as indispensable societal traits.
My favourite scene, and perhaps the most whimsical, is 18% into the ebook:
Santana’s ‘Smooth’ plays outside my window. I slide the blinds to the side and look down on the backyard deck. My mom’s Tupperware group is gathered around the table, passing around a bottle of wine.
The generational disconnect here is palpable. I do not want to give too much away, but Brad’s social-climbing mom is afforded significant agency at the end. It is an unexpected turn that, I suspect, is going to polarise readers. (It certainly changed my rating from 3 to 5 stars.)
It is an emotionally valid and surprisingly resonant ending that casts the events of the book in a much harsher light than the romantic glow of nostalgia – again, in line with Kazemi’s argument that the biggest impact on the present is our viewpoint of the past. Change that, and you can change the future. Or at least make it that much more bearable.
Of course, it might seem disingenuous or even disrespectful to suggest that a horrific event like Columbine can be perceived with any sense of nostalgia. The characters in ‘New Millennium Boyz’ certainly do, obsessing about what the killers wore, whether they went to Burger King or McDonald’s prior to the shooting, and what videos they watched.
Interestingly, Kazemi refers to ‘hybristophilia’, which Bing tells me “is a paraphilia involving sexual interest in and attraction to those who commit crimes.” I think such fetishisation only became possible when social media reached a nadir in the 2000s and allowed entire swathes of people to fall down rabbit holes of their making.
These people effectively live in alternate realities shaped by their paranoia and complete disassociation from what decoloniality refers to as the human Commons, “the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth.”
It is the literal antithesis of the stereotyped Columbine anti-hero lurking in a basement playing video games, eating Cheerios, watching porn (if the internet connection was fast enough), and plotting the downfall of humanity. Or at least their own school. However, Kazemi warns that to label his characters as ‘anti-heroes’ is, indeed, to fall into the trap of retrospective nostalgia.
Interestingly, Kazemi refers to ‘consumerism’, a buzzword of the 1990s, as opposed to our current obsession with capitalism as a system and its contribution to toxic masculinity and gender stereotyping. Selfish, self-centred behaviour is part and parcel of ‘manning up’ enough to climb the capitalist ladder to economic and patriarchal success.
It is a paradigm that was already being firmly entrenched in the 1990s, which ultimately makes ‘New Millennium Boyz’ such a sad read. A lot of attention is probably going to focus on some of the more gratuitous and lurid content (the Y2K pre-apocalypse setpiece is both Dionysian and intensely grubby.)
My sole caveat is that the book really needs a listing of organisations, helplines, or general resources that troubled youth can turn to if need be. We never know what intervention, no matter how small or random, is likely to save a single life or an entire community from tragedy.) This would have been far more effective than the rather lame ‘content warning’ that the publisher tags onto the beginning.
But these are the times we live in, and it is certainly brave for Kazemi to have pursued this project over such a long time of his own personal blogging career (and familiarity with controversy.) I also disagree with the editorial decision to asterisk out a particular swearword. But, again, these are perilous times for free speech and authorial ownership.
I just hope that the brouhaha this book will inevitably cause (I can just hear people ask: Where was the ‘sensitivity reader?’ while Kazemi was scribbling his depraved filth) does not overshadow his powerful message: The kids are not all right.
They haven’t been for a long time, and still aren’t, despite our more enlightened age (more woke, right wing, and reactionary; who would have seen that curveball coming in the 1990s?) And it is our collective responsibility to help each other navigate an uncertain future to leave a legacy that, in all probability, will be flawed and marred but that will tell our children’s children: We survived.
October 4, 2023
4.5
Brad is 17 and the narrator; conventionally middle class with rebel undertones, basic instincts and aspirational parents. We join him in 1999 and into the new millenium. Hormonally charged, particularly after his summer camp encounter with Aurora. We are privy to his sexual fantasies and those of his mates. Talking of which, he teams up with two new ones, Lu and Shane. With them, and especially Lu, the rebel instincts will unwind to a point where he is leading a double life - at some cost to his inner self.
That all sounds dreary. It isn’t, far from it!! Recall the year 1999 saw the Columbine massacre. Parents are edgy and inclined to be over protective of their children. But do they connect?
The setting is American suburbia. Affluent, materialistic, consumerist and vacuous. 8 years on from Brett Easton-Ellis’s American Psycho but it seems like yesterday. The air is heavy.
Read it for yourself. I was not disappointed! Is this really the author’s first novel? I’ll be keeping my eyes open for anything else he writes.
A copy, courtesy of Permuted Press - for an honest review.
Brad is 17 and the narrator; conventionally middle class with rebel undertones, basic instincts and aspirational parents. We join him in 1999 and into the new millenium. Hormonally charged, particularly after his summer camp encounter with Aurora. We are privy to his sexual fantasies and those of his mates. Talking of which, he teams up with two new ones, Lu and Shane. With them, and especially Lu, the rebel instincts will unwind to a point where he is leading a double life - at some cost to his inner self.
That all sounds dreary. It isn’t, far from it!! Recall the year 1999 saw the Columbine massacre. Parents are edgy and inclined to be over protective of their children. But do they connect?
The setting is American suburbia. Affluent, materialistic, consumerist and vacuous. 8 years on from Brett Easton-Ellis’s American Psycho but it seems like yesterday. The air is heavy.
Read it for yourself. I was not disappointed! Is this really the author’s first novel? I’ll be keeping my eyes open for anything else he writes.
A copy, courtesy of Permuted Press - for an honest review.
October 5, 2023
My review here: https://youtu.be/DfyhxfjCNrU
October 12, 2023
Update: I actually finished it this time. And I stand by everything I said below. Although I think I deserve some sort of award or something. Christ. I will also not be entering any further discourse about this. Thankyou for your time
Not for me. I first DNF'd this at 15%, but then I picked it back up again because of all the 'discourse' around it, and this time, I got to 62% before I just couldn't take it anymore. I actually hate giving out low scores and writing negative reviews, but in this case, the writing is just so irritating. There is not a single positive thing i can say about it. And what's more, nothing is happening either. It's just a bunch of 'boiz' sitting around being toxic.
And then - oh god, then lol - the PR team behind the release publicly trolled/harrased/bullied me on twitter, into taking down my original goodreads review, even though they were the ones who told me to post it here in the first place. I even sought legal advice from an old school friend because the whole experience was so awful, and so shocking, but in the end, because of my serious anxiety and mental health issues, I had to bend to their blackmail, and take it down.
However, since then, there has been some sort of backlash, and I quickly discovered that the same team has done similar things to various other authors/artists and reviewers and apparently have now been fired? Who knows. I'm currently muted and blocked by all their accounts, so I can't see what's happening. All the news I'm getting is hearsay from other indie authors and bookstagrammers.
Anyway, whatever, even setting aside the horrifying way that the PR team treated me, the book itself is simply not worth your time. I could go into exactly why and list all the things that I hated about it, but quite frankly, I've already wasted enough of my life on this ridiculous saga. Suffice to say, it's very much not for me. However, you might love it because humans are weird and there is simply no accounting for taste, lol. Have a great life, everyone :)
Not for me. I first DNF'd this at 15%, but then I picked it back up again because of all the 'discourse' around it, and this time, I got to 62% before I just couldn't take it anymore. I actually hate giving out low scores and writing negative reviews, but in this case, the writing is just so irritating. There is not a single positive thing i can say about it. And what's more, nothing is happening either. It's just a bunch of 'boiz' sitting around being toxic.
And then - oh god, then lol - the PR team behind the release publicly trolled/harrased/bullied me on twitter, into taking down my original goodreads review, even though they were the ones who told me to post it here in the first place. I even sought legal advice from an old school friend because the whole experience was so awful, and so shocking, but in the end, because of my serious anxiety and mental health issues, I had to bend to their blackmail, and take it down.
However, since then, there has been some sort of backlash, and I quickly discovered that the same team has done similar things to various other authors/artists and reviewers and apparently have now been fired? Who knows. I'm currently muted and blocked by all their accounts, so I can't see what's happening. All the news I'm getting is hearsay from other indie authors and bookstagrammers.
Anyway, whatever, even setting aside the horrifying way that the PR team treated me, the book itself is simply not worth your time. I could go into exactly why and list all the things that I hated about it, but quite frankly, I've already wasted enough of my life on this ridiculous saga. Suffice to say, it's very much not for me. However, you might love it because humans are weird and there is simply no accounting for taste, lol. Have a great life, everyone :)
August 22, 2023
Presumably this is what a seventeen-year-old boy sounded like at the turn of the century. While I recognize some cultural touchstones, as a Gen-Xer, I wouldn't know. Accurate or not, I will never recommend a work so full of misogyny and homophobia as this. Thanks, #NetGalley
May 29, 2024
I liked this book. I liked it far more than I thought I would when I was 100 pages in. I have read every Bret Easton Ellis book and am a purist when it comes to teen numbness and loss of innocence. New Millenium Boyz gives the impression that it is trying to be Ellis. That it’s trying to be transgressive. That it’s trying to capture the zeitgeist of 1999. What I realized as I read the final 50 pages was that NMB actually succeeded in everything it set out to do with its own voice and style.
Structurally, this novel is not perfect. The first half gives the tension loads of slack and the love letters scattered throughout feel like an obvious vehicle to illustrate the person Brad wants the world to see while he runs towards the darkness. Towards Lu. It felt slightly contrived, attempting to capture an aesthetic without the style to match, but halfway through the novel I felt the author’s voice and aim start to emerge. The voice of the child becomes the voice of the tragic anti-hero, and his suffering and darkness no longer feel designed, but inescapable.
I was less struck by the misogyny, racism, and homophobia of the late 90s that is crystalized by the brutal interactions our demonic trio has with the outside world and amongst themselves, than by the very real tragedy, panic, and loss that comes into focus amongst the endless flow of Ellisian cultural touchstones and references.
No longer was I finding the YA reading level littered with vulgarity and horror to be an attempt at recreating the cool and detached nature of an Ellis novel. The feigned loss of innocence becomes very, very real for the reader at the same moment it becomes real for our narrator, Brad Sela. His behavior is no longer a pose, an attempt at a nihilistic adolescence to rebel against the rigid structure and world of appearances of his affluent family. The stakes that were once just contours of a twisted friendship become immovable, permanent, and high, as we rush towards consequences the juvenile voice of the book convinced us could never be.
What I want from a novel is to be convinced. At times, this book is not convincing, but the heart of the novel, Brad’s relationship with Lu, felt real. I bought it. It didn’t matter that Brad’s conversations with his parents felt unnatural to me, or that a line like "The more you expose, the more invisible you become," seems like a blatant attempt at recreating—that—line from Glamorama. The characters shine with the gleam of the new era ushered in through the computer screen, and struggle against the inevitable pose that emerges when put in front of a lens.
Thank you to Permuted Press for sending me this novel in exchange for an honest review!
Structurally, this novel is not perfect. The first half gives the tension loads of slack and the love letters scattered throughout feel like an obvious vehicle to illustrate the person Brad wants the world to see while he runs towards the darkness. Towards Lu. It felt slightly contrived, attempting to capture an aesthetic without the style to match, but halfway through the novel I felt the author’s voice and aim start to emerge. The voice of the child becomes the voice of the tragic anti-hero, and his suffering and darkness no longer feel designed, but inescapable.
I was less struck by the misogyny, racism, and homophobia of the late 90s that is crystalized by the brutal interactions our demonic trio has with the outside world and amongst themselves, than by the very real tragedy, panic, and loss that comes into focus amongst the endless flow of Ellisian cultural touchstones and references.
No longer was I finding the YA reading level littered with vulgarity and horror to be an attempt at recreating the cool and detached nature of an Ellis novel. The feigned loss of innocence becomes very, very real for the reader at the same moment it becomes real for our narrator, Brad Sela. His behavior is no longer a pose, an attempt at a nihilistic adolescence to rebel against the rigid structure and world of appearances of his affluent family. The stakes that were once just contours of a twisted friendship become immovable, permanent, and high, as we rush towards consequences the juvenile voice of the book convinced us could never be.
What I want from a novel is to be convinced. At times, this book is not convincing, but the heart of the novel, Brad’s relationship with Lu, felt real. I bought it. It didn’t matter that Brad’s conversations with his parents felt unnatural to me, or that a line like "The more you expose, the more invisible you become," seems like a blatant attempt at recreating—that—line from Glamorama. The characters shine with the gleam of the new era ushered in through the computer screen, and struggle against the inevitable pose that emerges when put in front of a lens.
Thank you to Permuted Press for sending me this novel in exchange for an honest review!
October 25, 2023
I think what we as humans fear the most is our own tendencies towards evil. Deep down, we’ve always had the underlying belief that we might be capable of doing unspeakable harm. This fear within us increases ever so slightly every time we hear of other people’s evilness. We think that if other humans behave this way, what stops it from existing inside of us too?
This predilection towards insanity and evilness is exactly what Alex Kazemi strives to, and succeeds in, exploring. New Millennium Boyz is as sick and twisted as it is sharp and wildly unpredictable. It’s got that edge to it that most authors today don’t quite dare to explore. These boys are filled with hatred towards themselves and everyone else, and in their case, it results in unspeakable violence, drugs and so much worse. Think of Bret Easton Ellis at his most provocative, with a little hint of Bukowski’s unwavering honesty.
It’s the late 90s, and the new millennium is coming. Our main character, Brad Sela, is as so many of his peers, utterly lost and overwhelmed. Permeated by this insistence of his own superiorness, he is able to detach himself from reality and become the perfect anti-hero.
If you go into this book expecting a quick and fun read, you will grow to detest it right from the start. But if you, just like me, take an interest in unhinged and unforgiving main characters, this is definitely for you. One thing is for sure, the kids in this book are far from sane, and it is this side of them that Kazemi indulges in. With this book, he warns us of the cycle of toxicity that will prevail in our society for as long as we let it do so. If we continue to romanticise the “good old days” through our rosy retrospection, we’ll never make it out alive.
Yes, you’ll absolutely hate almsot every single character in this book, but yet, for some inexplicable reason, you won’t be able to stop reading it. While so many authors add a redemption arc for their characters towards the end, this books does the opposite. You’ll feel nothing for them, and that’s exactly how it should be.
- - - -
raw, unfiltered and so very weird. like american psycho but about 17-year-old boys with just about every mental illness there is. full review to come!
This predilection towards insanity and evilness is exactly what Alex Kazemi strives to, and succeeds in, exploring. New Millennium Boyz is as sick and twisted as it is sharp and wildly unpredictable. It’s got that edge to it that most authors today don’t quite dare to explore. These boys are filled with hatred towards themselves and everyone else, and in their case, it results in unspeakable violence, drugs and so much worse. Think of Bret Easton Ellis at his most provocative, with a little hint of Bukowski’s unwavering honesty.
It’s the late 90s, and the new millennium is coming. Our main character, Brad Sela, is as so many of his peers, utterly lost and overwhelmed. Permeated by this insistence of his own superiorness, he is able to detach himself from reality and become the perfect anti-hero.
If you go into this book expecting a quick and fun read, you will grow to detest it right from the start. But if you, just like me, take an interest in unhinged and unforgiving main characters, this is definitely for you. One thing is for sure, the kids in this book are far from sane, and it is this side of them that Kazemi indulges in. With this book, he warns us of the cycle of toxicity that will prevail in our society for as long as we let it do so. If we continue to romanticise the “good old days” through our rosy retrospection, we’ll never make it out alive.
Yes, you’ll absolutely hate almsot every single character in this book, but yet, for some inexplicable reason, you won’t be able to stop reading it. While so many authors add a redemption arc for their characters towards the end, this books does the opposite. You’ll feel nothing for them, and that’s exactly how it should be.
- - - -
raw, unfiltered and so very weird. like american psycho but about 17-year-old boys with just about every mental illness there is. full review to come!
October 24, 2023
I understand why the author wrote this book, as he had a publishing contract to fulfill and in an interview he says how he hopes it is 'career suicide' when it comes to writing novels, writing articles, etc.
This was very evident by this novel. I guess the author wants to pretend he's edgy like Bret once was.
I gave the book one star as the author is not good at writing and is the definition of a hack novelist. He was only perhaps 8 or 9 in the late 1990s and very early 2000s or the decades he is writing about. It's nostalgia for a time he was never really actually a part of as a teen or adult, and it's obvious he just made up what he thought it was like in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
This is akin to someone like myself from Gen X writing about being a teen in the 1950s or early 1960s or super early 1970s.
My main issue with the book is the slang and dialogue. I don't mean the sex talk, homophobia/biphobia, or anything else. By this I mean that it is very obvious that the author was a young kid in the late 1990s and early 2000s and he was never around any teens or adults and he has spent his entire life online and on social media or what later became social media. I worked with teens and young adults in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nobody talked the way the author has teens and adults talk in the novel, nobody used the slang he thinks that everyone did, and it's very obvious that the author is a poseur who was never even into anything he wrote about.
Massive sections of it were just basic regurgitation of articles or basic biographies about pop singers, actresses, etc. Even the references to computers and technology were not correct.
The ending was not a surprise or shock at all. You know what it's about, what will happen, and other authors wrote about these topics and themes before.
This was very evident by this novel. I guess the author wants to pretend he's edgy like Bret once was.
I gave the book one star as the author is not good at writing and is the definition of a hack novelist. He was only perhaps 8 or 9 in the late 1990s and very early 2000s or the decades he is writing about. It's nostalgia for a time he was never really actually a part of as a teen or adult, and it's obvious he just made up what he thought it was like in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
This is akin to someone like myself from Gen X writing about being a teen in the 1950s or early 1960s or super early 1970s.
My main issue with the book is the slang and dialogue. I don't mean the sex talk, homophobia/biphobia, or anything else. By this I mean that it is very obvious that the author was a young kid in the late 1990s and early 2000s and he was never around any teens or adults and he has spent his entire life online and on social media or what later became social media. I worked with teens and young adults in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nobody talked the way the author has teens and adults talk in the novel, nobody used the slang he thinks that everyone did, and it's very obvious that the author is a poseur who was never even into anything he wrote about.
Massive sections of it were just basic regurgitation of articles or basic biographies about pop singers, actresses, etc. Even the references to computers and technology were not correct.
The ending was not a surprise or shock at all. You know what it's about, what will happen, and other authors wrote about these topics and themes before.
November 3, 2023
Pretentious and poseurific. Trying so hard to be hip but comes off strained. The writer is not a very good writer, but seems very good at getting famous people to endorse him.
August 14, 2023
"Sometimes I relate so hard to something I forget if it's something I thought or something I saw."
"Everyone is in their own world. The biggest challenge you'll ever have is bringing someone into it."
Graphic, violent, weirdly hopeful. Somewhere between Less Than Zero, Ghost World, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant, New Millennium Boyz makes the 90's sound like the most sick and evil period in recorded history. Packed full of histrionic, nihilistic edgelords who claim to want to provoke others, but really just want to get a rise out of themselves amid the anesthetized consumerist hell they're forced to navigate. If you still feel nostalgia for Y2k-era aesthetics or feel the idyllic feelings of "simplicity" we tend to graft onto the past after reading this, I would get your head checked.
Kazemi captures the feeling of paralysis that going too far down an Internet rabbit hole can give you. No one is holding you at gunpoint forcing you to keep scrolling on a shock site, to keep reading that creepypasta, to watch something you *know* is going to upset you, but you can't stop. It's a 7-car crash, a journalist's beheading, a puppy getting kicked. It's cruel and nauseating.
The book's cardinal sin is endless monologuing-- your mileage with Kazemi's writing will depend entirely on your willingness to believe that even the most self-involved, tortured teens would speak how they do in NMB. The prose that comes out of these 17 year olds' mouths is often strikingly beautiful or completely gutting-- but just as often, you get the impression that Kazemi doesn't fully trust his readers to "get it." Lots of dialogue between characters comes off as rationalizing, over-explaining, or analyzing Kazemi's own scenes moments after they unfold. When it works, it's surreal-- when it doesn't, it feels like we aren't dealing with human beings, an essential when writing such a vile and heartless story.
Still, beyond worth your time. Has so much to say about vulnerability, surveillance, self-mythologizing, our need to aestheticize our lives, what women are capable of bringing out of men, the beginning of the end for the Straight White Guy-- plus some really filmic and intense party scenes that left me reeling. Kazemi doesn't write scenery to describe this period of time that's obviously very important to him; he writes a tapestry of products, brands, and marketing ploys, and it winds up being the most true-to-life portrait of the 90's I've ever read.
Will be divisive, but what a relief to have someone hack away at things we aren't supposed to remember, revere, or fear about the very recent past. Loved!
Thank you to Permuted Press for the ARC <3
"Everyone is in their own world. The biggest challenge you'll ever have is bringing someone into it."
Graphic, violent, weirdly hopeful. Somewhere between Less Than Zero, Ghost World, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant, New Millennium Boyz makes the 90's sound like the most sick and evil period in recorded history. Packed full of histrionic, nihilistic edgelords who claim to want to provoke others, but really just want to get a rise out of themselves amid the anesthetized consumerist hell they're forced to navigate. If you still feel nostalgia for Y2k-era aesthetics or feel the idyllic feelings of "simplicity" we tend to graft onto the past after reading this, I would get your head checked.
Kazemi captures the feeling of paralysis that going too far down an Internet rabbit hole can give you. No one is holding you at gunpoint forcing you to keep scrolling on a shock site, to keep reading that creepypasta, to watch something you *know* is going to upset you, but you can't stop. It's a 7-car crash, a journalist's beheading, a puppy getting kicked. It's cruel and nauseating.
The book's cardinal sin is endless monologuing-- your mileage with Kazemi's writing will depend entirely on your willingness to believe that even the most self-involved, tortured teens would speak how they do in NMB. The prose that comes out of these 17 year olds' mouths is often strikingly beautiful or completely gutting-- but just as often, you get the impression that Kazemi doesn't fully trust his readers to "get it." Lots of dialogue between characters comes off as rationalizing, over-explaining, or analyzing Kazemi's own scenes moments after they unfold. When it works, it's surreal-- when it doesn't, it feels like we aren't dealing with human beings, an essential when writing such a vile and heartless story.
Still, beyond worth your time. Has so much to say about vulnerability, surveillance, self-mythologizing, our need to aestheticize our lives, what women are capable of bringing out of men, the beginning of the end for the Straight White Guy-- plus some really filmic and intense party scenes that left me reeling. Kazemi doesn't write scenery to describe this period of time that's obviously very important to him; he writes a tapestry of products, brands, and marketing ploys, and it winds up being the most true-to-life portrait of the 90's I've ever read.
Will be divisive, but what a relief to have someone hack away at things we aren't supposed to remember, revere, or fear about the very recent past. Loved!
Thank you to Permuted Press for the ARC <3
August 23, 2023
First off - if you want a song to listen to give you a bit of the theme of this book, listen to Mr.Self Destruct by NIN. I think it fits perfectly. Mix a bit of Burn in there too and that's basically this book in song form.
We follow Brad, a 17-year-old who is entering his last year in HS who gets involved with the wrong crowd and ultimately makes a series of bad decisions to be accepted by his new friend(s). Though that's not who Brad really is, not really. You're a fly on the wall as it is mostly dialogue through the whole 300-some page book, but it works. I can't imagine this book having the same impact if told in third person. Transgressive as all hell. If you're sensitive to anything, don't read this book. If you want to get pissed off though, then yeah go ahead. lol.
I can't think of any book I have read in the last 15 years that has brought me down memory lane as much as this book did. The nostalgia, the 2000's references, MTV, Surge, Beavis and Butthead, man they talked shit about my girl Daria. lol.
This book is an ode to the following- The degenerates. The outcasts. The socially awkward. The weirdos. The goth kids. The punks. Those who don't get offended easily. Those who can laugh at themselves. Those with thoughts that are deeper than skin level. Those who ever felt utterly alone in this impossible world.
Alex, when you read this, thank you. I can see why it took 10 years to get this out.
Thanks Permuted Press for giving me the opportunity to read early. <3
"If you don't like the reflection, don't look in the mirror. I don't care. I'm too wild to live, too deadly to die."
We follow Brad, a 17-year-old who is entering his last year in HS who gets involved with the wrong crowd and ultimately makes a series of bad decisions to be accepted by his new friend(s). Though that's not who Brad really is, not really. You're a fly on the wall as it is mostly dialogue through the whole 300-some page book, but it works. I can't imagine this book having the same impact if told in third person. Transgressive as all hell. If you're sensitive to anything, don't read this book. If you want to get pissed off though, then yeah go ahead. lol.
I can't think of any book I have read in the last 15 years that has brought me down memory lane as much as this book did. The nostalgia, the 2000's references, MTV, Surge, Beavis and Butthead, man they talked shit about my girl Daria. lol.
This book is an ode to the following- The degenerates. The outcasts. The socially awkward. The weirdos. The goth kids. The punks. Those who don't get offended easily. Those who can laugh at themselves. Those with thoughts that are deeper than skin level. Those who ever felt utterly alone in this impossible world.
Alex, when you read this, thank you. I can see why it took 10 years to get this out.
Thanks Permuted Press for giving me the opportunity to read early. <3
September 25, 2023
I'm in actual PAIN that i was not obsessed with this book...based on its synopsis and the fact it was blurbed by 2 of my all-time favorite authors (Kazemi's magazine work has been on my radar for awhile too), I was so sure this would be one of my favorite books of the year. sadly the writing style in this book just really did not work for me - as someone who was a kid during that era, I appreciated the Y2K setting but it was SO overblown with constant pop culture references, including obnoxious dialogue between characters that really consisted of nothing other than band namedropping. I don't mind following unlikeable or annoying characters but it felt like a lot of the ones here were cringe just for the sake of being cringe. by the time the story started actually picking up, I was already exhausted.
there's definitely an audience for this book and I can see it being a beloved niche title, but the very specific voice here was just not my personal taste.
there's definitely an audience for this book and I can see it being a beloved niche title, but the very specific voice here was just not my personal taste.
September 13, 2023
You might like this book if:
You liked American Psycho, My Year of Rest and Relaxation—lots of pop culture references, exploring the guts and grime of a particular era, New Millennium Gothic.
You might not like this book if:
You’re not a fan of character studies, as this has a slower plot to let you sit with the characters.
Deliberate explicitness and graphic-ness in terms of language and description: this is an R-rated book and you need to check the CWs before reading it.
You liked American Psycho, My Year of Rest and Relaxation—lots of pop culture references, exploring the guts and grime of a particular era, New Millennium Gothic.
You might not like this book if:
You’re not a fan of character studies, as this has a slower plot to let you sit with the characters.
Deliberate explicitness and graphic-ness in terms of language and description: this is an R-rated book and you need to check the CWs before reading it.
August 18, 2023
I had to ponder this one for awhile as it is so different from most books I've read. I loved the 90's references; albeit there were MANY of them! Seventeen-year-old protagonist Brad is a "typical" millennial as he jokes around with his friends, seeks out willing girls, pranks friends, and lives for social media. Most of this takes place at a summer camp where he meets others like himself as well as the lovely Aurora. The novel is rife with profanity and if you can get beyond f-bombs every page, the story is intriguing and draws you in as Brad is (somewhat) lovable in his desire to find meaning, get laid, and ultimately find his place in the world! And oh, that ending had me gasping and crying as well!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
October 19, 2023
READING VLOG
if Larry Clark or Harmony Korine did YA
Major thanks to NetGalley and Permuted Press for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
It's interesting to see that while the world is obsessed with Y2K, we forget how toxic of a time it actually was. That threshold of the 90's coming into the turn of the millennium was shockingly homophobic, misogynistic, and violent. Why praise a time through the fashions of its aesthetics? Kazemi goes beyond the aesthetics and delves right into the very act of nostalgia.
He writes within the time. So much so that it feels like it was a product of its own time, honoring the teen angst and ennui of what it meant to be a teenage boy at the time.
From 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴:
𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺? 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴.
𝘊𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢: 𝘖𝘣𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳, 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢 13-𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳-𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭.
This book is a response to this. That to be a 13-year-old boy was also worth mourning about.
Products from that time period, be it an Eminem verse or even MTV's 𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯, art has always scraped the surface of what it meant to be as a teenager during the late 90s and early 2000s. Larry Clark was only ever interested in the Supreme-ification of teen ennui through the film grains of the cinematic eye. Harmony Korine, on the other hand, worked within the same aesthetics, but was more concerned with the socio-economic sphere of middle-America landscape in the language of Wim Wenders. Both artists, in all their respective transgressive natures, were aiming to paint the teen, but were referencing photographs instead of the subject itself. For example, what good is it to have filmed underaged teens simulating transgressive acts in cinema without letting them see the byproduct of their very selves (𝘒𝘪𝘥𝘴 1995)?
Though I haven't read all of Brett Easton Ellis or Dennis Cooper to see how they saw the 90's, I imagine only dirty nails scratching into the scalp of it all without it being the whole damn cranium. Here we have what feels like every teenage emotion in existence, crammed through Linklater prose without edits, conveying a naturality in the evil that exists in most of us. Unfiltered. Unashamed. Naked and born into the world. But here's the catch:
It's written as if it was for a YA audience. There's an accessibility in the language, in its fluidity, that makes it suitable for teens. Many would beg to differ, but I grew up on Skins, Ellen Hopkins, and also reading and watching a bunch of other things I shouldn't have been consuming during my teens. If you read George Bataille's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘺𝘦 at thirteen, you could totally do this. And as an angry, depressed teen, I would've wanted something much like this when I was still young and impressionable. Though the satire might be hard to fork out if read when young, the ugliness of man is apparent, and exists, as we know, at an early age. To be faced with that ugliness, to see it up close and personal in my acne ridden face, perhaps would've made me less ugly, allowed me to seek out beauty in ways that weren't so harmful, and dissuade me from spending so many hours in harmful self-discovery for my own becoming.
So, Kazemi goes back in time, writing through years becoming for the hurt teenager inside the underbelly of the 90s, creating not just an accurate representation of the malaise of the times, but an entity that never knew how to be exorcised.
if Larry Clark or Harmony Korine did YA
Major thanks to NetGalley and Permuted Press for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
It's interesting to see that while the world is obsessed with Y2K, we forget how toxic of a time it actually was. That threshold of the 90's coming into the turn of the millennium was shockingly homophobic, misogynistic, and violent. Why praise a time through the fashions of its aesthetics? Kazemi goes beyond the aesthetics and delves right into the very act of nostalgia.
He writes within the time. So much so that it feels like it was a product of its own time, honoring the teen angst and ennui of what it meant to be a teenage boy at the time.
From 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴:
𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺? 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴.
𝘊𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢: 𝘖𝘣𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺, 𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳, 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢 13-𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳-𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭.
This book is a response to this. That to be a 13-year-old boy was also worth mourning about.
Products from that time period, be it an Eminem verse or even MTV's 𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯, art has always scraped the surface of what it meant to be as a teenager during the late 90s and early 2000s. Larry Clark was only ever interested in the Supreme-ification of teen ennui through the film grains of the cinematic eye. Harmony Korine, on the other hand, worked within the same aesthetics, but was more concerned with the socio-economic sphere of middle-America landscape in the language of Wim Wenders. Both artists, in all their respective transgressive natures, were aiming to paint the teen, but were referencing photographs instead of the subject itself. For example, what good is it to have filmed underaged teens simulating transgressive acts in cinema without letting them see the byproduct of their very selves (𝘒𝘪𝘥𝘴 1995)?
Though I haven't read all of Brett Easton Ellis or Dennis Cooper to see how they saw the 90's, I imagine only dirty nails scratching into the scalp of it all without it being the whole damn cranium. Here we have what feels like every teenage emotion in existence, crammed through Linklater prose without edits, conveying a naturality in the evil that exists in most of us. Unfiltered. Unashamed. Naked and born into the world. But here's the catch:
It's written as if it was for a YA audience. There's an accessibility in the language, in its fluidity, that makes it suitable for teens. Many would beg to differ, but I grew up on Skins, Ellen Hopkins, and also reading and watching a bunch of other things I shouldn't have been consuming during my teens. If you read George Bataille's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘺𝘦 at thirteen, you could totally do this. And as an angry, depressed teen, I would've wanted something much like this when I was still young and impressionable. Though the satire might be hard to fork out if read when young, the ugliness of man is apparent, and exists, as we know, at an early age. To be faced with that ugliness, to see it up close and personal in my acne ridden face, perhaps would've made me less ugly, allowed me to seek out beauty in ways that weren't so harmful, and dissuade me from spending so many hours in harmful self-discovery for my own becoming.
So, Kazemi goes back in time, writing through years becoming for the hurt teenager inside the underbelly of the 90s, creating not just an accurate representation of the malaise of the times, but an entity that never knew how to be exorcised.
January 24, 2025
Bored, privileged suburban Boyz n the Hood losing themselves as they fight their images, often in dark and disturbing ways. Totally chopped—chopped is the fetch of this new millennium.
August 18, 2023
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Critical Score: A
Personal Score: A
“This book was my ten year long exploration and attempt to expose the diabolical privileges and abuse of powers straight white men had in the post-Columbine era. I wanted to show how the media encouraged young boys to embody their worst impulses, while also trying to empathize with the experience of growing up at the height of so much MTV-driven consumerism.”
-Alex Kazemi
I almost already regret giving New Millennium Boyz 5 stars, because I really do hate this book.
Audacious and truly transgressive, this is unlike anything I’ve read before. It was a terrible experience. I couldn’t put the book down. Maybe that’s because I knew the sooner I was done with it, the sooner I’d be relieved of it’s incredible power, the sheer audacity and commitment of its satire.
I’ll start off on something light by commenting on the setting. Right from the get-go, New Millennium Boyz boasts an overwhelming amount of late 90s cultural references. I was not born until 2000, so I can’t say whether this is distracting and over the top or nostalgic and well-researched (as Kazemi was only 5 in 1999). It’s clearly a meticulous labor of love. At 19, he secured a book deal after the original manuscript went viral on Tumblr in 2013, but allegedly backed out and took a decade to revise. That’s also clear; there are so many quotably good philosophical passages in here that it’s a little scary. You can see a couple places where he sort of cobbled scenes together from great lines alone, but it’s forgivable because of the satirical framework.
In that way, the dialogue is occasionally unnatural. It’s often hard to tell who is saying what because of the lack of dialogue tags. A few times throughout, I really wondered if this is poorly written or…camp? Avant-garde? Is this actually sneakily problematic or is the satire just really dry? The author’s quote above seemingly makes it clear, or take this line from the book: “Rock ‘n’ roll in the new millennium is all about offending people and challenging the world around you. This is not just a lifestyle, but a 24/7 state of mind, my friend.”
It is hard to keep telling yourself that while reading. But either way, this is an intense and utterly raw artistic expression of immorality in the throes of youth. It’s an exercise in hateful reading. It’s combative engagement because the narrator is so awful so you can’t just sit back and enjoy the show. The themes are as much about what’s not being said on the page as what is, and it depends highly on which sentence you’re looking at. I felt consistently challenged in trusting the satire. You have to repeatedly finish the thought that Kazemi starts, and he doesn’t make things easy or clear, so I totally understand if that makes people hate this book. In a way, I do. While its satire at times feels redundant and tedious, veering into a political torture porn of sorts, there is an addictive undercurrent in the work’s brazen, modernist structure.
But the reason I fell in love with this work on a personal level is for the many, many moments that capture teen angst, media-induced FOMO, and cultural ennui through an effective contemporary voice. I won’t say every idea in here is super original, but the voice made me feel like I was seeing some things for the first time, and that’s really the test of good literature, because there’s nothing new under the sun. That’s why it’s so ironic that the voice felt like it was parodying itself in parts, giving us some lines that feel so juvenile that would make my 5 star rating a joke.
Plus, there are many stretches of dialogue wherein teen boys go on horny, objectifying rants or they’ll blandly discuss pop music for pages on end. It’s all a part of the process, but it means that the reading experience could be a chore—and that’s not even accounting for the way the whole book is a chore because of its dark content.
Kazemi oscillates between profound and trifling. The profound parts sometimes feel contrived, like he had a bullet list of philosophical points that he crudely shaped into a scene because, goddamnit, he was intent on getting those ideas in this book. The result is two characters having conversations of non-sequiturs. But it works because Kazemi runs with it.
Meanwhile, some themes get repetitive, and all the while you’re unsure what the author means ironically, authentically, or somewhere in between. I think that’s the most challenging part. The narrative is mind-boggling in its loaded nihilism and crass in its wit. Yet it’s hard to put down. Still yet it’s tedious and short on structured plot.
The profane characters are full of hypocrisy and self contradiction. Through them, the narrative is consequently at times wise and at other times profoundly unserious. Sometimes the satire is preaching rusty nails to an abused choir (hate crime scenes, I’m looking at you). Other times it’s showing us the places where we might emotionally overlap with even the most despicable of our youth.
I doubt this book will find a strong audience. I think readers today are less interested in satire of this vitriolic kind, where you have to put so much trust in the author meaning exactly the opposite of most of what they’re saying. I really hope the wrong audience doesn’t claim this book the way toxic men claimed Fight Club and American Psycho, wherein by championing those books they fulfilled the very parody of them. But both those books were bestsellers and reached very wide readerships. New Millenium Boyz is much less commercially appealing. I suspect it’s too rambling and overstated (in what it’s precisely NOT stating) to interest a majority. Not enough people are interested in writing that doesn’t help you figure out what it’s trying to say—and that’s valid. Plus, why put yourself through a super offensive experience when the story absolutely refuses to ever rectify, clarify, justify, or purify the immorality of its protagonists? Am I a masochistic book worm? The disgust of this kind of experience is a component of transgressive lit that’s built to steer clear of the mainstream.
By the final pages, this really fucked with my head. It’s basically terroristic literature. This was more demoralizing than any kind of graphic violence I have read. It was spiritually torturous. The story’s conclusion kind of helps to give this book a sense of moral purpose, but even if there wasn’t one, the book still validates itself as an art piece by being two things above all else: devoted and uncompromising.
Critical Score: A
Personal Score: A
“This book was my ten year long exploration and attempt to expose the diabolical privileges and abuse of powers straight white men had in the post-Columbine era. I wanted to show how the media encouraged young boys to embody their worst impulses, while also trying to empathize with the experience of growing up at the height of so much MTV-driven consumerism.”
-Alex Kazemi
I almost already regret giving New Millennium Boyz 5 stars, because I really do hate this book.
Audacious and truly transgressive, this is unlike anything I’ve read before. It was a terrible experience. I couldn’t put the book down. Maybe that’s because I knew the sooner I was done with it, the sooner I’d be relieved of it’s incredible power, the sheer audacity and commitment of its satire.
I’ll start off on something light by commenting on the setting. Right from the get-go, New Millennium Boyz boasts an overwhelming amount of late 90s cultural references. I was not born until 2000, so I can’t say whether this is distracting and over the top or nostalgic and well-researched (as Kazemi was only 5 in 1999). It’s clearly a meticulous labor of love. At 19, he secured a book deal after the original manuscript went viral on Tumblr in 2013, but allegedly backed out and took a decade to revise. That’s also clear; there are so many quotably good philosophical passages in here that it’s a little scary. You can see a couple places where he sort of cobbled scenes together from great lines alone, but it’s forgivable because of the satirical framework.
In that way, the dialogue is occasionally unnatural. It’s often hard to tell who is saying what because of the lack of dialogue tags. A few times throughout, I really wondered if this is poorly written or…camp? Avant-garde? Is this actually sneakily problematic or is the satire just really dry? The author’s quote above seemingly makes it clear, or take this line from the book: “Rock ‘n’ roll in the new millennium is all about offending people and challenging the world around you. This is not just a lifestyle, but a 24/7 state of mind, my friend.”
It is hard to keep telling yourself that while reading. But either way, this is an intense and utterly raw artistic expression of immorality in the throes of youth. It’s an exercise in hateful reading. It’s combative engagement because the narrator is so awful so you can’t just sit back and enjoy the show. The themes are as much about what’s not being said on the page as what is, and it depends highly on which sentence you’re looking at. I felt consistently challenged in trusting the satire. You have to repeatedly finish the thought that Kazemi starts, and he doesn’t make things easy or clear, so I totally understand if that makes people hate this book. In a way, I do. While its satire at times feels redundant and tedious, veering into a political torture porn of sorts, there is an addictive undercurrent in the work’s brazen, modernist structure.
But the reason I fell in love with this work on a personal level is for the many, many moments that capture teen angst, media-induced FOMO, and cultural ennui through an effective contemporary voice. I won’t say every idea in here is super original, but the voice made me feel like I was seeing some things for the first time, and that’s really the test of good literature, because there’s nothing new under the sun. That’s why it’s so ironic that the voice felt like it was parodying itself in parts, giving us some lines that feel so juvenile that would make my 5 star rating a joke.
Plus, there are many stretches of dialogue wherein teen boys go on horny, objectifying rants or they’ll blandly discuss pop music for pages on end. It’s all a part of the process, but it means that the reading experience could be a chore—and that’s not even accounting for the way the whole book is a chore because of its dark content.
Kazemi oscillates between profound and trifling. The profound parts sometimes feel contrived, like he had a bullet list of philosophical points that he crudely shaped into a scene because, goddamnit, he was intent on getting those ideas in this book. The result is two characters having conversations of non-sequiturs. But it works because Kazemi runs with it.
Meanwhile, some themes get repetitive, and all the while you’re unsure what the author means ironically, authentically, or somewhere in between. I think that’s the most challenging part. The narrative is mind-boggling in its loaded nihilism and crass in its wit. Yet it’s hard to put down. Still yet it’s tedious and short on structured plot.
The profane characters are full of hypocrisy and self contradiction. Through them, the narrative is consequently at times wise and at other times profoundly unserious. Sometimes the satire is preaching rusty nails to an abused choir (hate crime scenes, I’m looking at you). Other times it’s showing us the places where we might emotionally overlap with even the most despicable of our youth.
I doubt this book will find a strong audience. I think readers today are less interested in satire of this vitriolic kind, where you have to put so much trust in the author meaning exactly the opposite of most of what they’re saying. I really hope the wrong audience doesn’t claim this book the way toxic men claimed Fight Club and American Psycho, wherein by championing those books they fulfilled the very parody of them. But both those books were bestsellers and reached very wide readerships. New Millenium Boyz is much less commercially appealing. I suspect it’s too rambling and overstated (in what it’s precisely NOT stating) to interest a majority. Not enough people are interested in writing that doesn’t help you figure out what it’s trying to say—and that’s valid. Plus, why put yourself through a super offensive experience when the story absolutely refuses to ever rectify, clarify, justify, or purify the immorality of its protagonists? Am I a masochistic book worm? The disgust of this kind of experience is a component of transgressive lit that’s built to steer clear of the mainstream.
By the final pages, this really fucked with my head. It’s basically terroristic literature. This was more demoralizing than any kind of graphic violence I have read. It was spiritually torturous. The story’s conclusion kind of helps to give this book a sense of moral purpose, but even if there wasn’t one, the book still validates itself as an art piece by being two things above all else: devoted and uncompromising.
October 7, 2023
I initially thought I'd like this book. After the first third it grew very tedious with the constant pop culture references and self hatred of the characters. I can't honestly recommend this book to anybody and I doubt I'd ever read another book by this author.
September 29, 2023
Drew like a dark, fucked up version of the hamburger helper mascot haha. Just a glimpse into my dark reality. A full stare into my twisted perspective would make most simply go insane lmao
October 8, 2023
Hell is a teenage boy.
The ultimate deconstruction of juvenile masculinity and 90s/Y2K nostalgia. This book immediately sparked my interest due to the author’s history and the praise circulating his work. When he was 18, Kazemi posted an excerpt of a novel about a troubled 90s teen named Brad Sela on Tumblr; it went as viral as fiction could in 2013 and nabbed a deal with MTV Books. This is a huge deal, and I was intrigued to see this story from an author born in Vancouver, my home city. I was even more surprised to see how much his writing has been praised despite not having a large library of work. His 2020 book about practical witchcraft caught the attention of Madonna, and New Millenium Boyz begins with a plethora of quotes from big names praising his works; Ellen Hopkins, Bret Easton Ellis, Poppy Z. Brite, and Columbine survivor and author Brooks Brown. It’s strange but I do feel a strange sense of connection and pride for this stranger’s career simply because we’re both queer guys who grew up in Vancouver. The story itself is an examination on the dark nuances of adolescent masculinity. Set in 1999 to 2000, the novel centers on Brad’s senior year as he lugs his clear plastic JanSport around, emotes “Boo-yah!” a lot, and finds himself caught up in a series of friendships embodying the worst excesses of bro-y Y2K masculinity. In many ways it is an extension of Kazemi’s online provocations, featuring Columbine worship, satanic rituals, gay-bashing, and asks its titular generation to confront the totality of its formative years. While the 2010s were the peak of my adolescence, I recognized a lot of uncomfortable nostalgia revolving around growing up around immature adolescent boys, only this time, the novel takes us through this time through the perspective of one of these meatheads.
On the intention of this novel, Kazemi writes: “The way we were obsessing and fetishizing over Y2K, I was like, Can we unmask the realities of what was happening at that time behind all of this saccharine, cotton candy nostalgia that makes me feel crazy?” I relate to this a lot as someone who sees the 2010s romanticized by the teens of today. In a Vanity Fair article featuring an interview with the author, Kazemi writes: “We're always exploring the cruelty of teen girls—Mean Girls, Jawbreaker, all that stuff, but we never look at how mean teen boys are, how diabolical and evil it is to be a teenage boy especially in that era. It's horrifying to think of what was encouraging to people.” And I think that this is such an important and intriguing theme throughout the novel and even throughout my own life. I admit that I’m someone who romanticizes the 90s and early 2000s without truly thinking about the truth of it. I like the aesthetics and nostalgia associated with something so close and yet so far, something I never truly knew as I was born in 1996. The atmosphere of the novel is immediately set as the author relentlessly uses references to 90s and Y2K slang and media. The guys are casually sexist, racist, and homophobic in passing, and simultaneously cocky and deeply insecure, something so palpable in heterosexual teenage boys.
One significant moment that stood out to me was when Daniel and Brad tell each other they would hug each other if “it wasn’t gay”. I think that line says so much in its simplicity, in how boys and their ingrained homophobia and sexism prevents them from forming deep bonds with each other while they perform personas of masculinity and whatever they believe that to be. And that’s exactly what this book shows masculinity to be. A performance. Everything these boys do is to impress or feel accepted by other boys. The scene where Brad says he feels sad that his male friendships are only about getting high and getting girls when they used to see the world around them and that was enough for them to be happy was really impactful for me. I related to the scenes where the boys chase darkness just to feel something real. The death of innocence and boyhood and the transition into juvenile delinquency. It’s a grieving period on its own and one that I’m familiar with, as I’m sure many guys are also familiar with. It was interesting seeing how much has changed and how much has stayed the same comparing the setting of the novel to modern day. I thought it was interesting how a character mentions they don’t think about high school since they don’t have a way to look into other people’s lives, which says a lot about social media and how it’s effected people and their development and what’s normal.
I completely understand why some readers wouldn’t be a fan of the constant references to 90s/Y2K culture, but I think it was interesting and spoke to how there were only so many windows into the world and culture as a whole, and how there were only so many personalities people could develop because of that. The culture of mass consumption was uniquely different. In our modern day, some people would argue that the internet and mass media consumption has divided us more than ever, which is true in some aspects I’m sure, but it was interesting to see how these characters inhabited an almost monocultural society where people were so much more susceptible to singular and similar ways of black and white thinking. Even the characters who consider themselves to be antiestablishment feel curated by their culture. That being said, I’m sure people a few decades from now will look back on my time and say the same thing.
There are a lot of justified criticisms on our current culture, but we have to admit to ourselves that we’ve come so far, and I appreciate how this book pulls back the curtain and takes off our rose coloured nostalgia glasses on the 90s and early 2000s. This book points to the dark spots of this era, the ones that people willfully forget. The sexism, racism, homophobia, the casual cruelty, the mass dehumanization of celebrities, the school shootings and gun violence, the apathetic attitudes towards mental illness and mental health. People often complain about political correctness and the political extremities projected by social media political personalities, but we often forget just how much the world has changed for minorities from the 2010s (when I was in high school) until now, never mind how much it’s changed since the 90s to our modern day. This story was dark and bleak while showing the bright and flashy atmosphere coloured by the 90s/Y2K. It was a dark time capsule of that time through the lens of a boy who tries so hard to be somebody that he loses himself forever. This book is perfect for fans of Bret Easton Ellis novels and Gregg Araki movies.
While this book will disgust a lot of people, I think a lot of men will read this book and shamefully see a lot of their younger selves in it. I think a lot of people will be turned off by this novel and this perspective, but it made me so thankful. As hard as the past few years have been, I’m technically living better than I ever have. It’s easy to look back on your younger years and confuse yourself by looking into those memories with rose coloured nostalgia glasses, but this book reminded me of the hardest parts of being a teenage boy, and how much I wanted to escape my own adolescence and skip to my 20s. I don’t miss the intensity of being young and feeling everything for the first time, being surrounded by people confused and growing into themselves and hurting everyone along the way.
I don’t miss being a teenage boy.
“Everyone is in their own world. The biggest challenge you’ll ever have is bringing someone into it.”
The ultimate deconstruction of juvenile masculinity and 90s/Y2K nostalgia. This book immediately sparked my interest due to the author’s history and the praise circulating his work. When he was 18, Kazemi posted an excerpt of a novel about a troubled 90s teen named Brad Sela on Tumblr; it went as viral as fiction could in 2013 and nabbed a deal with MTV Books. This is a huge deal, and I was intrigued to see this story from an author born in Vancouver, my home city. I was even more surprised to see how much his writing has been praised despite not having a large library of work. His 2020 book about practical witchcraft caught the attention of Madonna, and New Millenium Boyz begins with a plethora of quotes from big names praising his works; Ellen Hopkins, Bret Easton Ellis, Poppy Z. Brite, and Columbine survivor and author Brooks Brown. It’s strange but I do feel a strange sense of connection and pride for this stranger’s career simply because we’re both queer guys who grew up in Vancouver. The story itself is an examination on the dark nuances of adolescent masculinity. Set in 1999 to 2000, the novel centers on Brad’s senior year as he lugs his clear plastic JanSport around, emotes “Boo-yah!” a lot, and finds himself caught up in a series of friendships embodying the worst excesses of bro-y Y2K masculinity. In many ways it is an extension of Kazemi’s online provocations, featuring Columbine worship, satanic rituals, gay-bashing, and asks its titular generation to confront the totality of its formative years. While the 2010s were the peak of my adolescence, I recognized a lot of uncomfortable nostalgia revolving around growing up around immature adolescent boys, only this time, the novel takes us through this time through the perspective of one of these meatheads.
On the intention of this novel, Kazemi writes: “The way we were obsessing and fetishizing over Y2K, I was like, Can we unmask the realities of what was happening at that time behind all of this saccharine, cotton candy nostalgia that makes me feel crazy?” I relate to this a lot as someone who sees the 2010s romanticized by the teens of today. In a Vanity Fair article featuring an interview with the author, Kazemi writes: “We're always exploring the cruelty of teen girls—Mean Girls, Jawbreaker, all that stuff, but we never look at how mean teen boys are, how diabolical and evil it is to be a teenage boy especially in that era. It's horrifying to think of what was encouraging to people.” And I think that this is such an important and intriguing theme throughout the novel and even throughout my own life. I admit that I’m someone who romanticizes the 90s and early 2000s without truly thinking about the truth of it. I like the aesthetics and nostalgia associated with something so close and yet so far, something I never truly knew as I was born in 1996. The atmosphere of the novel is immediately set as the author relentlessly uses references to 90s and Y2K slang and media. The guys are casually sexist, racist, and homophobic in passing, and simultaneously cocky and deeply insecure, something so palpable in heterosexual teenage boys.
One significant moment that stood out to me was when Daniel and Brad tell each other they would hug each other if “it wasn’t gay”. I think that line says so much in its simplicity, in how boys and their ingrained homophobia and sexism prevents them from forming deep bonds with each other while they perform personas of masculinity and whatever they believe that to be. And that’s exactly what this book shows masculinity to be. A performance. Everything these boys do is to impress or feel accepted by other boys. The scene where Brad says he feels sad that his male friendships are only about getting high and getting girls when they used to see the world around them and that was enough for them to be happy was really impactful for me. I related to the scenes where the boys chase darkness just to feel something real. The death of innocence and boyhood and the transition into juvenile delinquency. It’s a grieving period on its own and one that I’m familiar with, as I’m sure many guys are also familiar with. It was interesting seeing how much has changed and how much has stayed the same comparing the setting of the novel to modern day. I thought it was interesting how a character mentions they don’t think about high school since they don’t have a way to look into other people’s lives, which says a lot about social media and how it’s effected people and their development and what’s normal.
I completely understand why some readers wouldn’t be a fan of the constant references to 90s/Y2K culture, but I think it was interesting and spoke to how there were only so many windows into the world and culture as a whole, and how there were only so many personalities people could develop because of that. The culture of mass consumption was uniquely different. In our modern day, some people would argue that the internet and mass media consumption has divided us more than ever, which is true in some aspects I’m sure, but it was interesting to see how these characters inhabited an almost monocultural society where people were so much more susceptible to singular and similar ways of black and white thinking. Even the characters who consider themselves to be antiestablishment feel curated by their culture. That being said, I’m sure people a few decades from now will look back on my time and say the same thing.
There are a lot of justified criticisms on our current culture, but we have to admit to ourselves that we’ve come so far, and I appreciate how this book pulls back the curtain and takes off our rose coloured nostalgia glasses on the 90s and early 2000s. This book points to the dark spots of this era, the ones that people willfully forget. The sexism, racism, homophobia, the casual cruelty, the mass dehumanization of celebrities, the school shootings and gun violence, the apathetic attitudes towards mental illness and mental health. People often complain about political correctness and the political extremities projected by social media political personalities, but we often forget just how much the world has changed for minorities from the 2010s (when I was in high school) until now, never mind how much it’s changed since the 90s to our modern day. This story was dark and bleak while showing the bright and flashy atmosphere coloured by the 90s/Y2K. It was a dark time capsule of that time through the lens of a boy who tries so hard to be somebody that he loses himself forever. This book is perfect for fans of Bret Easton Ellis novels and Gregg Araki movies.
While this book will disgust a lot of people, I think a lot of men will read this book and shamefully see a lot of their younger selves in it. I think a lot of people will be turned off by this novel and this perspective, but it made me so thankful. As hard as the past few years have been, I’m technically living better than I ever have. It’s easy to look back on your younger years and confuse yourself by looking into those memories with rose coloured nostalgia glasses, but this book reminded me of the hardest parts of being a teenage boy, and how much I wanted to escape my own adolescence and skip to my 20s. I don’t miss the intensity of being young and feeling everything for the first time, being surrounded by people confused and growing into themselves and hurting everyone along the way.
I don’t miss being a teenage boy.
“Everyone is in their own world. The biggest challenge you’ll ever have is bringing someone into it.”
September 9, 2023
This novel is shrouded in mystery—in internet conspiracy, and that feels completely intentional like this entire thing might be some sort of performance art.
The story starts innocently enough but slowly delves into darker territory as Brad (our aimless and numb narrator) searches for freedom from the good boy he’s supposed to be. His new friends Lu and Shane drag him down with them, and they do some insanely vile things, but the worst part of them might be their attitudes towards their fellow humans. No offensive language is spared in this book (although upsetting, it feels authentic to the time period).
Between constant dialogue, Brad has a few chances to think about his place in the world / his desires / his doom. I found this aspect interesting. I enjoyed seeing his different sides when he was engaging with the cast of characters. He sort of had a different role with each of them.
Alex Kazemi nailed this y2k era with all of the details he included (kind of in an American Psycho way). The novel is basically a catalog of everything that cluttered suburban homes during that time. I almost forgot how materialistic that time period was. (Have we lost some name brands through the years? Or have we just become a different sort of materialistic?)
The internet is a big character itself in this book. There’s something so ominous about the internet in the late 90s / early 2000s. This is sort of the dawn of constant performance, where unnoticed ordinaries suddenly have “the world” as an audience. There’s a constant pull to be noticed, to shock, to offend. What’s really scary is the amount of access that has suddenly been granted to so many people who have no clue how to handle it. I’m glad I wasn’t old enough to experience the year 2000 as a high school student, there must have been such an unease beneath everything.
The story starts innocently enough but slowly delves into darker territory as Brad (our aimless and numb narrator) searches for freedom from the good boy he’s supposed to be. His new friends Lu and Shane drag him down with them, and they do some insanely vile things, but the worst part of them might be their attitudes towards their fellow humans. No offensive language is spared in this book (although upsetting, it feels authentic to the time period).
Between constant dialogue, Brad has a few chances to think about his place in the world / his desires / his doom. I found this aspect interesting. I enjoyed seeing his different sides when he was engaging with the cast of characters. He sort of had a different role with each of them.
Alex Kazemi nailed this y2k era with all of the details he included (kind of in an American Psycho way). The novel is basically a catalog of everything that cluttered suburban homes during that time. I almost forgot how materialistic that time period was. (Have we lost some name brands through the years? Or have we just become a different sort of materialistic?)
The internet is a big character itself in this book. There’s something so ominous about the internet in the late 90s / early 2000s. This is sort of the dawn of constant performance, where unnoticed ordinaries suddenly have “the world” as an audience. There’s a constant pull to be noticed, to shock, to offend. What’s really scary is the amount of access that has suddenly been granted to so many people who have no clue how to handle it. I’m glad I wasn’t old enough to experience the year 2000 as a high school student, there must have been such an unease beneath everything.
January 5, 2024
I wanted to like it, and for a while I really did. But then it just kept going and going and I felt no development whatsoever in the characters, they didn't learn a damned thing and felt like after-school special representations of "the wrong crowd" with a lot of brand placement to show that this was a Real And Authentic Story From The Late 90s!
It got boring and just kinda tiring to keep reading so it took me a while to finish it (as I took breaks to read other more interesting books). I think this book could have been half the length and had the same impact, while not making my mind wander to things like laundry and had I paid the electric bill. It took teenage edgelordism to the extreme and ended up making it a caricature of itself. Like yeah, kid, I get it. I was left feeling meh.
It got boring and just kinda tiring to keep reading so it took me a while to finish it (as I took breaks to read other more interesting books). I think this book could have been half the length and had the same impact, while not making my mind wander to things like laundry and had I paid the electric bill. It took teenage edgelordism to the extreme and ended up making it a caricature of itself. Like yeah, kid, I get it. I was left feeling meh.
September 28, 2023
Full Review
While it’s a flawed first novel, I do think that anyone with an interest in Y2K nostalgia or the idea of a Larry Clark film in book form should give this a try. I think Alex Kazemi has a better book in him in the future and I look forward to what he comes up with.
While it’s a flawed first novel, I do think that anyone with an interest in Y2K nostalgia or the idea of a Larry Clark film in book form should give this a try. I think Alex Kazemi has a better book in him in the future and I look forward to what he comes up with.
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