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In the Sight
Farrier had been raised in the East…
Furtive spaces on the outskirts of cities, truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and obscure research outposts — those are the places where Farrier did his work. What’s the nature of that work, you ask? DIY brain modification, for starters — highly experimental and in no way legal. When his past catches up with him, Farrier sets out on a road trip without end, frenetically crossing the country in search of redemption, revisiting old haunts along the way.
This tale of open roads, weird science, and endless reinvention draws inspiration from Destroyer’s 2002 album This Night. It also features aviaries gone wrong, obscure retail outlets, and coffee. So much coffee. Don’t try this at home, readers.
Furtive spaces on the outskirts of cities, truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and obscure research outposts — those are the places where Farrier did his work. What’s the nature of that work, you ask? DIY brain modification, for starters — highly experimental and in no way legal. When his past catches up with him, Farrier sets out on a road trip without end, frenetically crossing the country in search of redemption, revisiting old haunts along the way.
This tale of open roads, weird science, and endless reinvention draws inspiration from Destroyer’s 2002 album This Night. It also features aviaries gone wrong, obscure retail outlets, and coffee. So much coffee. Don’t try this at home, readers.
- GenresFiction
180 pages, Paperback
Published February 6, 2024
138 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 23, 2024
I loved this novel! Weird, deadpan, grounded in highway culture and in the kinds of bar/hotel/nowhere spaces that are both super liminal and anonymous. I got lots of J.G. Ballard and some Don DeLillo, but the novel is definitely its own wonderful thing. The most fun I've had vicariously speeding through identity-erasing drug deliveries while navigating the remnants of a secret society and some heavy existential questions. Highly, highly recommended.
February 19, 2024
Read in one sitting.
A strange little story about a guy who travels from gas station to gas station hooking his clients up with a homemade drug that messes with their brains and turns them into someone completely different.
A gig that was working out pretty a-ok for him until, at one particular drop off, he's informed that someone is coming for him. And suddenly we're on a road trip from hell, hotel hopping across country as our dude reconnects with old friends and tries to stay one step ahead of whatever nightmare is following him.
Though with one last pill in his pocket, there's the hope that he can continue to run... until he can't, and then... well...
A strange little story about a guy who travels from gas station to gas station hooking his clients up with a homemade drug that messes with their brains and turns them into someone completely different.
A gig that was working out pretty a-ok for him until, at one particular drop off, he's informed that someone is coming for him. And suddenly we're on a road trip from hell, hotel hopping across country as our dude reconnects with old friends and tries to stay one step ahead of whatever nightmare is following him.
Though with one last pill in his pocket, there's the hope that he can continue to run... until he can't, and then... well...
May 7, 2024
I'm cheating, in that I heard the author read a section from this, in person, so I'm carrying that rhythmic, questing voice in my head. This book is part liminal America road movie, part existential pinball game, part weird-science. What a fun, strange read! (Maybe one part Kerouac, one part Vonnegut, with a pinch of DeLillo?) Highly recommended.
August 22, 2024
Review to come
November 19, 2024
A journey novel about a mysterious protagonist driving around selling a drug that alters people into..well..other people. But he begins to change amidst his own esoteric existence, a morality descending upon him.
Like Reel, so understated and so f***ing good. I love Carroll's writing. An astonishing ability when the story comes off as so subtle and yet floors you at the same time. Reading Carroll is like reading life inside of a neural passage. It's so uncanny.
Another divine experience by one of the most unique and beautiful writers out there right now. Highly recommend.
Like Reel, so understated and so f***ing good. I love Carroll's writing. An astonishing ability when the story comes off as so subtle and yet floors you at the same time. Reading Carroll is like reading life inside of a neural passage. It's so uncanny.
Another divine experience by one of the most unique and beautiful writers out there right now. Highly recommend.
March 6, 2024
What a weird and fun little novel. Equal parts head trip and road trip.
April 8, 2025
It's the feeling of a late night gas station with the fluorescent lights humming a little too loud and the road outside of their perimeter a little too quiet. You've done something terrible to someone who might be able to exact revenge but probably not. You're faster than them. You can disappear. By the end you have. They'll never find you behind that hotel bar. Right?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2025
I sometimes find myself wishing more words existed to describe different and very specific shades of wistfulness. For example, I feel an unusual yearning when I walk past large buildings that I know I’ll never be able to go inside and explore.
I also experience a very specific feeling when I’m driving on the highway alone at night in an area of the United Stars I’m unfamiliar with—say, on a road trip. It is sad and isolating, but undercut with this unmistakable freedom: the impossibly tall signs for gas stations, the liminal roadside eateries…the variety of hotel and motel chains that are one notch above or below the other in a spectrum of sterile shittiness…somehow, it all invites me to disappear into it all forever.
“In the Sight” by Tobias Carrol effectively captures the latter flavor of wistfulness in a way I’m not exactly sure I’ve ever absorbed from a book. The main character, Farrier, is a technician of sorts, as well as a traveling salesman, and he delivers a very potent and mind altering substance (not sure I’d call it a drug?) to high paying customers who he barely knows. A Kafkaesque conspiracy surrounds Farrier and his associates, but the book’s heart is Farrier’s attempts to escape this underworld and blend in with and disappear into the greater United States.
I picked this up from the author at Voidcon 2025 and I’m glad I did. The notes mention it’s inspired by a Destroyer song which I’m gonna go listen to now before going to sleep.
I also experience a very specific feeling when I’m driving on the highway alone at night in an area of the United Stars I’m unfamiliar with—say, on a road trip. It is sad and isolating, but undercut with this unmistakable freedom: the impossibly tall signs for gas stations, the liminal roadside eateries…the variety of hotel and motel chains that are one notch above or below the other in a spectrum of sterile shittiness…somehow, it all invites me to disappear into it all forever.
“In the Sight” by Tobias Carrol effectively captures the latter flavor of wistfulness in a way I’m not exactly sure I’ve ever absorbed from a book. The main character, Farrier, is a technician of sorts, as well as a traveling salesman, and he delivers a very potent and mind altering substance (not sure I’d call it a drug?) to high paying customers who he barely knows. A Kafkaesque conspiracy surrounds Farrier and his associates, but the book’s heart is Farrier’s attempts to escape this underworld and blend in with and disappear into the greater United States.
I picked this up from the author at Voidcon 2025 and I’m glad I did. The notes mention it’s inspired by a Destroyer song which I’m gonna go listen to now before going to sleep.
November 7, 2023
The greatest short novel inspired by the music of Destroyer ever written? I think so. Then again, I wrote it.
October 6, 2024
A kind of shaggy dog mumble noir about identity, purpose, and living on the fringe. Highly recommended.
March 7, 2025
Terrific sentences. Tobias Carroll can really write!
4.5 ⭐️
4.5 ⭐️
April 7, 2025
vibey; a fun little read for a Cancun beach day
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews