The Mind Reels

by Fredrik deBoer

In his debut novel, longtime observer of culture and politics Fredrik deBoer depicts mental illness in all its grim and ugly reality, free of our culture's endless romanticization of insanity.

In a dorm room at her safety school, surrounded by corn-fed boys and contemptuous girls, Alice is losing her mind. Her first semester is spent clinging to middling grades between drunken hookups and roommate fights. The next brings sleepless nights, extreme weight loss, and effortless, compulsive energy, paused only by an unexpected summoning from the RA for evaluation. Thus begins an endless march of lithium, antidepressants, and Klonopin; doctors and therapists—when health insurance allows—along with overwhelmed parents and well-intentioned friends; all helpless bystanders as Alice descends deeper into chaos.

As chilling as a psychiatric case study, as wry and precise as Flaubert, The Mind Reels peels back society's polite trappings to portray the experience of mental illness in all its complexity.

Genres: Fiction, Dark Academia, Mental Health, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Horror, Academia

163 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 7, 2025

About the author

Fredrik deBoer is a writer. He lives in Connecticut.

Reviews

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv) · Rating 1 out of 5]

For anyone visiting this review in the future, my full experience with the author is saved as a highlight on my Bookstagram page. The book aside, I will not be recommending or reading this author based on his behavior!
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There's a subreddit called r/MenWritingWomen, which chronicles the very unsuccessful attempts of men writing women. Often this includes dramatized depictions, a complete lack of understanding of womanhood, and/or the ability to sexualize virtually anything. I would not be surprised to see much of this book on that subreddit.

The overt misogyny and forced references to breasts are taking away from any enjoyment I could have with the plot. Within the first three chapters, you have:

- The University campus is described as bustling with "blonde girls with big tits" (this is the first descriptor used)

- A woman describes her horniness as "the desire to lie under some energetic boy as he pounded away"

- She wants to leave a party without "being passed around by frat boys" (which is a valid concern about women's safety, but why is this a serious quote?)

- The words "tits" were referenced 4 times for absolutely no reason? The first thing she talks about in her friend's Halloween costume? The first thing she looks at in the mirror? Always tits.

- Halloween is also referenced as the time for "when sweet plain ordinary girls are allowed to whore it out a little"

Maybe this is some meta commentary about internalized misogyny that is going over my head, or maybe I'm just too sensitive, but I simply cannot wade through this in good faith. I feel bad because I requested an ARC and I always like to support indie presses, but this was a rare miss from Coffee House Press for me.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most accurate portrayals of a mood/psychotic disorder that I’ve ever read in modern lit. My chest feels like it’s bursting with the incredible feeling of seeing myself in a story. This is why representation is important.

I know there are conversations going on about the author (as seen in other reviews), but I don’t have enough information right now to personally make a comment about him as a person.

If someone asked me to rate this book with no outside context, I’d give it 1000000000/5 stars.

Like all of my reviews, this is subject to future edits (with transparency) if I deem it necessary.

Thank you to Coffee House Press for my gifted ARC!

[Fredrik deBoer]

Hey guys, I really hate to do this here, but there's apparently some sort of coordinated action going on over at BlueSky about this book. Guys: I don't have a Reddit account under my own name. I do use Reddit sometimes, but I do so under a series of burners that never last more than a couple months. I really ask you guys to do a reality check here. I have been a uniquely controversial figure online for more than fifteen years. Do you really think I would have a Reddit account where I say and do controversial things... under my own name? I'm perfectly fine with people disliking me or this book, but doesn't that sound like an incredibly stupid, self-destructive thing for me to do? Anyone can sign up for a Reddit account under fredrik_deboer or whatever! Please, practice critical thinking.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you know someone with a mental illness and are bewildered by them, this may help to explain a few things: how tough the day-to-day life of multiple antipsychotic meds is; how a single toxic person can undo what they’ve worked so hard for; why self-harming actions might seem inevitable to them. The novel is compelling, rough, and realistic.

I received this book as part of my Coffee House Press subscription for Fall 2025.

[Abbé Busoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I log into social sites, the impenetrable wall of moralizing is such a tedious bummer that I tend to log out again as quickly as possible. The way people lustily search each other’s online history for evidence of their frailty and bad opinions, then punish them for it? Oof, that shit fills me with despair for our species.

But as I grow older I think all that moral outrage is just millions and millions of people desperate to locate authenticity. They want to witness it in action. Someone with powerful ethics and consistent politics who isn’t just gaming the zeitgeist. It’s an abstract concept but you know it when you see it. And this novel is deeply authentic.

You can tell this is the work of a writer who’s struggled mightily with psychosis and the maddening, nonlinear trajectory of coming to terms with mental illness, and then trying to get help.

In a literary world where everyone wants to be Jonathan Franzen, DeBoer’s prose is really refreshing. I found the story propulsive and hypnotic and upsetting. Not a “fun” read, but an important one. The romanticizing of mental illness must end. This book will be remembered for its contribution to the cultural counterargument.

Note: Please ignore the top (one star) review. It’s written by a young man who believes he somehow wields the moral authority to scold another man for improperly depicting the female sexual experience.

Well, I’m a woman who says “tits,” and sometimes I use vulgar language to describe my sexual desires. This is so common among adult women that it shouldn’t require a spirited defense, but here we are.

[Ashley]

The fact that I have to wait til Oct 7 for the majority of my friends to read this is so fked up
EDIT: those were my my initial thoughts, right after finishing and loving this^

since then, a decent amount has happened.
tl;dr? I don't wanna promote this book, instead I'll direct you to The Once & Future Me by Melissa Pace.

I'd be lying if I said I disliked The Mind Reels—I loved it while reading & up to this point... But having learned/seen more about/from our author since, I can't in good conscience recommend others buy deBoer's work. If that changes, I'll letcha know.

(ugh this is all so unfortunate, I REALLY loved this & was willing to put my neck out there for it)

[Anna Dorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

extremely bleak but i like the writing !

[Zac Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who both vehemently agrees and even more vehemently disagrees with Freddie's various/sundry takes, I didn't totally know what to expect from his first foray into fiction when I was lucky enough to win an advance copy of The Mind Reels in a subscriber contest.

Don't worry about the takes: The Mind Reels is an achievement. Not since Don Gately has there been a better portrayal of the mundanity of mental illness — mundanity as practice, mundanity as temperature, mundanity as an entire grammar for being.

Which is not to say the story itself is mundane. The writing is electric, buzzing with the manic energy of...mania. The plot whips and thrashes through the funhouse pendulum of self-sabotage. And the whole thing is just well-executed — well-crafted, well-paced, good solid structural bones, with an ending that embodies the best type of inevitable.

Plenty of people will insistently read this book through the corpus of Freddie's work and his ideological project around mental health. That's fine, in the sense that it delivers upon that dimension. But it's also deeply limiting, in that The Mind Reels is simply one of the best pieces of fiction released this year. There is no need to insert an asterisk, to qualify with clearing of the throat and waving of the hands.

It's just an awesome book, and lots of people should read it. Read this awesome book.

[Patrick Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two quick disclaimers: one, I have been a fan of deBoer's writing for roughly a decade now (even when I disagree with him, which is often), and I very much enjoyed both of his non-fiction books and have been a subscriber to his Substack (from which I won a giveaway to get a galley copy of this book) since it launched, although I never read the novel he shared through his newsletter. Two, when I read these days it's usually nonfiction, with the little fiction I've read the last couple of years being very light reading. In many ways, I am about as terrible a choice as you can get for a review, but I won the giveaway, so I feel obligated to share my thoughts.

There was finally a pleasant day to sit on my balcony and relax, so I figured I'd finally start this book as I worked my way through a pot of coffee. It's only about 150 pages long, so I figured I'd get a third or so through my book before I moved on to other things I needed to do that day. Unfortunately, once I started reading I couldn't set it down. The Mind Reels follows a young women named Alice, who at the beginning seems like a funhouse reflection of Tom Wolfe's Charlotte Simmons. Alice isn't a valedictorian beauty who falls apart due to a series of traumatic events before getting everything back together and having a happy ending with a promise of a bright future ahead of her after college. No, Alice is an average girl with average looks who lived an average life before something in her brain just started going haywire. It's all very banal.

But that's the point, the banality of mental illness. deBoer nails it here, the ebbs and flows of a serious mental illness. There's nothing fun or funny or quirky, just waves of mania that reach a crest of bleating paranoia before everything collapses in on itself. It's a perfect fit for deBoer's signature style, as his writing carries with it an anxious and angry energy that permeates throughout. You aren't forced to watch the slow-motion train wreck, but you can't help but find yourself carried along.

I do have one small complaint, which is the dialogue. Sometimes it still works, and the dialogue is not particularly important most of the time. I could squint and try and say that it was a stylistic choice, but honestly, I think the honest answer is just that writing dialogue is hard in general and not something deBoer has a lot of practice in. Sometimes, like with Alice's parents, the dialogue just sounds weird, not sounding like how people actually talk but not in a way that seems to be underlying the themes in the book. In a few other places, Alice speaks and the language feels far too flowery given everything else we know about her. But the dialogue is relatively sparse, and ultimately serves a purpose; hardly the biggest flaw.

This is absolutely a five-star novel, but I hesitate to recommend it; I certainly won't be reading it again any time soon, if ever. When I had finished, I didn't know if I wanted to cry or puke or have several stiff drinks. My own mental health issues have been mercifully minor, but I have known people who are very much like Alice. It's a tough read even with some distance from the subject matter. If you suffer from serious - and I do mean SERIOUS, not "teehee I have all these trendy self-diagnosed illness" - mental health problems, I wouldn't recommend it; but then, if that's you, you're living it already. But for everyone else, especially those who have (or had) Alices of their own in their lives, it's probably worth the couple of hours it takes to read. Just be ready to stare blankly at a wall for a few minutes when you finish it.

[Kylee Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't need to have trauma to be traumatized. Mental illness can develop without reason, and there's nothing "quirky" about it.

"The Mind Reels" follows a college student as she struggles with her mental health. Nothing traumatic happen in childhood, yet she still develops a severe mental illness. We watch as she descends to the lowest of lows, dismissed by others as just “tired,” until finally someone recognizes her pain and does what they can to help.

About a quarter into the book, I guessed how it might end, and while the ending is intentionally ambiguous, it left me frustrated. Normally I enjoy open endings, but this one felt like a real person’s story cut short, with options offered instead of resolution. I just wanted to know.

Despite that, this book is superb. I gave "The Mind Reels" 4.5 stars only because the ending didn't sit right with me. Still, I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a deeper, more authentic understanding of what living with mental illness can actually look like, rather than the way it’s often simplified or romanticized in media.

[Maya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been reading Fredrik deBoer’s writing online for almost 10 years now. I pay $5 every month to read his Substack. I have a lot of appreciation for him as a thinker and as a writer, and find him worth reading even when I disagree. I was intrigued to read his first novel, The Mind Reels. Having finished (it’s a quick read) I don’t regret reading it, but I also didn’t like it very much.

I just don’t think this book quite succeeds as a novel. It is certainly an expressive and illuminating look at how serious mental illness can manifest, the effects it has on the life of the person afflicted, and the struggles of managing a lifelong disorder- all topics DeBoer has explored, very eloquently, in his non-fiction. But there needs to be more than that.

There’s a flatness to the characters, especially the side characters in Alice’s life, and even Alice herself doesn’t feel fully-formed. For a book like this to work we need to feel emotionally attached to Alice. But she never quite comes alive as more than a cipher for the author’s ideas about mental illness. Her experiences and thoughts are not always portrayed with great depth, even as they intensify. (Alice’s diagnosis is never mentioned, but it appears to be bipolar I with psychotic features.) There’s a lot of telling rather than showing.

There are passages of prose that are striking and profound, but there are also quite a few that feel clunky and disjointed. Sometimes the perspective feels awkward; there’s a tension between the moments of omniscient narration and those in which we’re following Alice’s perspective more closely that DeBoer can’t quite resolve smoothly. It creates a sort of disconnect, in which DeBoer never fully inhabits this character.

I know I sound pretty negative about this book, but that’s partly because I had high expectations, given my admiration for DeBoer as a writer. I’ll certainly keep paying my $5 a month and reading DeBoer’s Substack essays with interest. And if he ever writes another novel, I do think I would pick it up, at least to check it out. There are a lot of things about The Mind Reels that feel very “first novel” so I would be interested to see how DeBoer might evolve as a novelist in subsequent books.

[Cranky Commentary (Melinda) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a walking tour through mental illness. It’s written using third party approach, which causes it to read like a case study, or more journalistic than it could have been. It does help to keep the reader’s experience more objective. At the risk of seeming argumentative, I (once again) did not think the main character, Alice, was well written as a female. I know she was mentally ill, but her actions and ideas about sex were unusual for a female. To me, she came off as having been written by a male, which is a pet peeve of mine.

We follow Alice through some of her childhood and teen years. Some of the wild and promiscuous behavior could be considered within (but pushing) the boundaries of normal for Alice’s age group. College is where the real trouble starts, so it becomes more detailed throughout these years. This is where she loses control.

The book was fairly short, and explains Alice’s story pretty well. Although it was a disappointment that her diagnosis was never specified, her behavior and medications give the reader a pretty good idea of what’s going on, and the author probably didn’t want to “pigeon hole” his MC by labeling her.

The book chronicles Alice’s life and how her disability affected her. It may give readers more understanding of mentally ill people, which is good, but Alice’s case was very difficult and depressing. For someone wanting to read this to understand their own mental challenges, I could not recommend this book for that reason. To those who would like a better understanding of this subject, I highly recommend Welcome Silence by Carol S. North. It’s an older book, and the meds and treatments used are probably outdated by now, but it really gives a clear view of what a mental condition is like.

This was not a fun book to read, but interesting. Three stars.

[Bia Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating exploration of mental illness. The overall mood of the story was rather clinical and down, and gave the feeling that Alice was mostly a passenger in her own life, with her illness in the driver’s seat. It’s all pretty devastating, especially because even though Alice’s experience is extreme in some ways, it’s utterly normal in so many others. I felt sad after reading it knowing that people have experiences like that with mental illness, and how hard it is to do the “right” thing when your mind is working against you.

[Kelsey Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story about a college student's struggle with mental illness and the chaos surrounding their relationships with themselves and others if untreated.

This is a must-read for anyone struggling with mental illness. There are many aspects of Alice's thoughts and actions that I can relate to, which is heartbreaking.

“The truth is that she had grown to hate herself for everything she was and did.”

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this straight through last night and today am reading about the controversy regarding the author. I’m uninterested really in following all the accusations/denials. The fact remains that this is an excellent novel about an ordinary young woman’s experiences with a major mental illness and with the existing mental health system. Having lots of experiences with people who have major psychiatric illnesses and with the subpar systems which “treat” (manage) them, I thoroughly recommend this harrowing unexploitative book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review for this book was published by Library Journal in September 2025:

Alice is in trouble. A college freshman of no particular ability or ambition, at the University of Oklahoma because all her reach schools rejected her, Alice has seen her health take a turn for the worse: struggling in class, sleeping little, alienating her roommate with her growing paranoia, and beyond the reach of student health to help. So begins deBoer's short but brutal novel about the terrifying banality of mental illness, a subject the provocative essayist (How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement) has written extensively about, in a story devoid of most fictional affectations. In place of an aspirational narrative featuring a quirky protagonist overcoming personal adversity is the relentless grind of Alice's soul-robbing efforts to get better, a never-ending cycle of hospitalization and therapy and medication that allows her merely to function in the world. As one year gives way to another and her support system disappears, Alice faces a stark dilemma: continue to take the pills that stabilize her but leave her listless, or go off the medication so as to feel something and begin the vicious cycle anew. It's an existential, no-win dilemma that leads to the novel's unsettling final pages. VERDICT Since David Foster Wallace's death, the everyday reality of mental illness has rarely been captured as rigorously and without adornment as deBoer's hard-to-shake portrait of a woman in unceasing crisis. 

Copyright ©2025 Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

[ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely bleak & extremely well written.

[Allie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most raw and accurate depiction of mental illness in millennial/Gen Z women I've ever read.

[Julia Chiavegato · Rating 1 out of 5]

genuinely the worst book I have ever read. it’s as though someone googled ‘mental illness’, copy and pasted the AI generated response into chat GPT along with the prompt of “write a story about an angsty woman who has literally every single mental disorder”. i genuinely do not understand why a grown ass man would feel as though he has ANY RIGHT to write from the perspective of a 20-something year old girl?? especially when most of the book is about her being ‘a slut’?? truly so disgusting and honestly disrespectful to people suffering from mental illness and women in general. i hate this book so much i am going to rip out each individual page and burn it. i only finished it out of spite because i bought it. what a waste of paper. what a waste of time. what a waste of money.

DO! NOT!! READ!!!

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal, raw, and compelling. I feel like it may take me a while to move on from this.

[Remi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5, rounded down to 4 (full review to come)

The Mind Reels is a raw, unflinching look at schizophrenia, from the late teens through adulthood, showing the messy, often terrifying realities of mental illness. the depiction of alice’s episodes, her meds, and the cycles of relapse felt painfully real.

#note: the author has engaged publicly with early criticism online, which caused some controversy. personally, i found the book’s content powerful and important, though readers may wish to be aware of the surrounding discussion.

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i can dig in any fictional book focusing on mental health

*thank you to Coffee House Press for the ARC*

[Stony Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

(This is an abridged version of a review I wrote on Substack; I did not have a Goodreads account before today.)

The book was was pretty good! But I felt like the pieces were in place for it to be truly great, and tragically, that the book's problems detracted from it more than the effort that would have been required to fix them.

To that point, my first major impression was that the editing was subpar. Some pages (page 9, page 17) have obvious typos, and I remember a line from even earlier that was incomprehensible, I think because he accidentally swapped the pronouns of two characters mid-sentence. To give a more balanced idea, here's a passage from much later which was mostly good, but still held back by editing issues:

The ground felt cool underneath her and her exhaustion sapped her fear. She balanced on the edge of a total loss of control, but for the moment the ceaseless acceleration of everything that was Alice, the relentless intensification of the very idea of her, brought a paradoxical calm, like how they treat hyperactivity by giving you speed. Above her the stars looked still but she knew they were wheeling their steady path across the sky. Inside her mind, dark and grandiose thoughts assaulted her without pity, whispering insistently that she was a grand being of immense power and that lying under a tree late on a cool spring night on campus she was being tracked and surveilled, her movements noted down for history and to better facilitate the campaign of stalking and disinformation that was being waged by shadowy elite forces of immense power. She did not hear voices. She never heard voices. Never in her life would she hear voices.

I think a word is missing in the part that starts with "whispering insistently" (regardless it reads awkwardly), and the phrase “of immense power” gets repeated in a way that doesn't seem intentional. Many of the book's issues are like this: arguably minor, maybe attributable to artistic license, but still they chip away at the experience of reading what should be an otherwise excellent novel.

Now the reason that the poor editing was my first impression is simply due to chronology, because it was mostly concentrated in the first 20 or so pages. Thankfully the good parts of the above passage are more representative of the novel on the whole than the bad parts. At times the writing is simultaneously disturbing, touching, even experimental, but without overdoing it. It's paced brilliantly. However, there were still some passages that I found lacking in intention or subtlety, that could have been improved by a discerning editor.

The writing quality is still good enough to carry the book's ideas, which are genuinely important, and woefully underrepresented in literature. If you're familiar with the author's blog, you'll know these are his usual ideas: the mentally ill are sick. They are not all harmless angels. Mental illness is not their superpower - it is often debilitating and threatening to themselves and others. Some people use mental illness as currency. Some people put on a performance about their mental illness. Some people lie outright about even having a mental illness.

To this end the protagonist is written sympathetically but never glamorously. She squanders personal opportunities, pushes away people close to her, humiliates herself publicly. There's even a scene where she pisses herself, others where some very unpleasant bowel movements are described. This might all sound gratuitous but I didn't experience it that way while reading it; it just seemed realistic about the challenges of someone with a serious mental health condition.

It helps that one of the book's strengths is that it just felt real generally. I know some scenes were loosely autobiographical (including an incident involving a bird that I recognize from one of the author's blog posts), so those were literally real, but also the way the characters were fleshed out felt lifelike and resisted pigeonholing. You could tell this was the work of someone who has struggled with the inflexibility of first impressions and bad reputation.

An interesting experiment would be to pitch this book to someone less familiar with the author's other work. I couldn't be 100% immersed in it because of how much I recognize his writing voice, his philosophy on mental illness, his personal experience with it, etc. There's even words he uses (like “boutique”) that are just too recognizably "Freddie-esque" and took me out of it. At points this made the narrative voice feel a bit impersonal, and I found myself wishing it was written in the first person, though I have no idea if this is an actual good suggestion. To a less plugged-in reader it's likely that none of this would be an issue.

I'll close by sharing my two favorite passages:

The counselor pumped the plunger on her pen three times, drawing the tip in and out. Alice swam through what the doctor had just said, searching it for all its possible valences, hoping to take it apart schematically, quantitatively, like a robot. Instead she felt very alone and very exposed and so she simply told the truth, afraid of how a lie might ring false in that sterile office.

“I go up and down,” she said. “I am beset with monsters. My roommate seeks to dominate me, she places rice into my food, the rice expands in my belly in the night and it threatens me, it threatens my heart, I sleep with a boy named Craig from the next dorm over and he holds himself inside of me after he comes so that he can imprint his DNA onto mine. I can read the writing behind the writing in my favorite class, the professor is warning me of dreadful things to come. I am so vulnerable, so alone and subject to every passing person's thoughts. I fear my own power. I fear my own blood will pour out of my eyes and drown the people I pass in the halls and it will mix with their own blood. I feel I am allergic to wind and the milk in the dining hall tastes like sawdust.” She went silent for a beat, then turned her head so that her left eye looked directly into the hood of her sweatshirt. She chuckled into the fabric.

The doctor clicked her pen twice, four times, eight, twelve times more, with no overt sign of concern, rock-steady except that she pushed back from her desk, leaned forward ever so slightly in her chair, farther, farther. She fished a page out of her desk drawer.

“Yes,” said the doctor. “You're very tired.”

After this unhinged monologue the doctor hands her a brochure for “dealing with stress”. The stereotype in media and among anti-psychiatry types is that “the system” just wants to put the mentally ill in straitjackets and pop them with sedatives. But I think the above illustrates a more typical way that the system fails them, through a kind of friendly, well-intentioned, and clueless minimization.

Here's another. In this scene, she's lying in stasis on her dorm room floor:

She could see the little digital alarm clock on her desk from her vantage point. The minutes seemed never to move and also to barrel forward with ruthless momentum. This was a problem, as she had two classes that afternoon, and she had sworn a dark unholy oath that she would attend. As the first class approached, she scheduled when she would climb up off the carpet, giving herself enough time to get a little dolled up for the baseball player who she had enjoyed a low-level flirtation with. The minute arrived and she did not stand. Only a shower, then, she thought, and set a new time. When that moment came and went she decided, okay, no shower, just time enough to get to class. And then the class's start time arrived and she thought that she would just be fifteen minutes late if she hustled. And then she gave up on her first class and went through the same progression with her second, and when the last minute of the second class had passed she remained in her spot. Worthless, she thought to herself. Worthless, worthless human. And she really had to pee.

Love it!

[Bob Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5...closer to 4? The writing was compelling and the author created a fairly credible portrait of a woman whose mind has been hijacked. He does lean into some "men writing women" cliche regarding her sex life, and I found her parents a little rote (mom is anxious and frustrated, dad is stern, stoic, and doesn't know how to emote or show affection), but the mental health travails I found convincing and harrowing, if not a little watching-a-train-wreck. The last quarter of the book was just so sad and felt too real.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-wrenching, compassionate, brutal, and honest. A beautiful debut novel that doesn’t give up on hope.

[Roger Sweeny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it pretty much straight through. Which might seem unexpected. The protagonist is a fairly ordinary woman in a state college town in Oklahoma. There are no larger than life characters, no cute or quirky personalities, no fascinating situations. There is no dramatic childhood trauma setting the story in motion--though a therapist keeps trying to get her to find one. There is no battle of good and evil. No Nurse Ratched. Some people could have done better or done more, but, hey, they're human.

The novel follows Alice from high school to her mid-thirties. During her freshman year in college, she goes crazy, has a "psychotic episode." It builds gradually, with no obvious cause. But it is intense. DeBoer very deliberately doesn't blame anyone or any thing, just the inconsiderateness of biology, the amorality of nature. And that gives the book its power, that and deBoer's writing. The writing really pulls you along, a testament to deBoer's skill.

And also the realism. DeBoer has had psychotic episodes, where he has hurt people and done things he wishes he could undo. Mental hospitals, therapists, and medications are a significant part of his past. Every person is different but to a significant extent, he has been inside Alice's head. At one point, I thought of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

Alice is stabilized with medications but they have side effects, and the psychotic episodes have a drama and intensity that medicated life doesn't. So every once in a while, she stops, goes crazy, does stupid things, winds up in "the system", and meds back to her new normal. Which eventually leads to a crisis. I won't give away the ending.

Disclosure: As a reader of deBoer's substack, I was given the opportunity to enter a lottery for a free "uncorrected galley" of the book. That is what I reviewed.

[Ryan F · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeBoer’s writing manages to be both unflinching and sympathetic. The story, while often tragic, is not exclusively so and doesn’t descend into voyeuristic mental illness porn. If you are only familiar with the author form his political writings, his fiction writing has the same clarity and humor without the politics (or without the explicit politics). DeBoer presents his main character humanely and fully without judging her. He neither excuses nor condemns her actions and, in so doing, critically examines the complex questions at the core of mental health discourse and our unwillingness to even talk about them.

[Christine Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout most of this book I kept thinking, “Wait is this fucking play about us?” because as a clinically depressed person with severe anxiety this was the most accurate literary representation of mental illness I’ve ever read.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a 1:1 parallel of my experience with mental illness, but it’s close. And the ending is definitely a place I’m familiar with.

[J.D. Rhodes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mind Reels is a tough one. I've followed de Boer's writing for years, before his return to Substack, and have generally enjoyed his non-fiction pieces. I read a previous attempt at fiction by him (The Red, The Brown, The Green) and I wasn't much of a fan. Ultimately, it can be tough to transition from non-fiction to fiction -- they're different skills! But The Mind Reels is, I think, more of an attempt to see if de Boer can bridge that gap.

I have no ax to grind. I'm not like the 195 liked review where it's pretty clear there was some kind of ulterior motive on the part of the writer (hint: that blonde tits descriptor is not the first one used about the university campus.) That said, I also don't really agree with the author's own opinion of a coordinated action to attack this book (I did my own research and could not find anything to corroborate it but, perhaps, I was not looking in the right places.) What I am is a guy who came to realize his own mental condition was not neurotypical during his first few years of college, and someone who thinks de Boer's writings on mental health are some of his best work.

So, I won't say I had high hopes for The Mind Reels, but realistic ones. De Boer's fiction hadn't wowed me before, but this would be a better attempt -- and it is. The Mind Reels was a read that, while flawed, was one I struggled to put down.

The first flaw is the prose itself. I feel silly invoking this phrase but it does, well, insist upon itself. It's in this elevated register that feels like de Boer is really trying to channel an important, literary novel -- but it prevents one from truly sympathising with Alice, and also gives the whole novel the feeling of being told and not shown. Some of the long, winding segments have a bit of a 'my first novel' feel to them. On one hand, it helps keep Alice at a distance and helps illustrate the abnormalities in her behavior and thought processes. On the other, it's a bit like reading a dry, academic paper. Or, perhaps, a non-fiction piece.

The second flaw is the one that some reviewers have picked up on, but handled unfairly -- that is to say, the gap between Alice and de Boer. The old chestnut of men writing women.

I am not a writer or reader who believes in essentialism. I think men and women can write each other poorly and write each other with admirable insight. The Mind Reels' issue here is that de Boer's prose sometimes has an air of judgement about it ("a record of a young woman trying to be something she wasn't") even when I do not think de Boer intended for that. I have to say, however, these moments took me out of my reading of The Mind Reels like a landmine going off. Without properly placing us 'inside' Alice's head, these asides read like the judgement of the author and not a thought of Alice's, and that can make for a world of difference.

I think the second flaw is a symptom of the first. And, like a lot of these 'influencer books', I'm going to assume that any editorial work/advice was fleeting. I feel like any decent editor would've underlined all of those asides and asked, Freddie, are you sure about this? Especially with your online history? For a profession that is remarkably attuned to the possible reception from Bookstagram, Booktok, Booksky, Booktwitter, etc. it just feels odd that they'd set up such easy targets.

So, the good. When The Mind Reels gets going, when it gets into the sad intricacies of Alice's condition, the various institutional failures, the moments of delusion and madness, it works really well (and you can even see how that elevated register works to the benefit of the novel.) The syllable counting bit was particularly inspired. As someone who works in mental health, I think this is a solid depiction. As someone who has lost friends to psychosis and/or suicide, I likewise think it handles it all well.

The problem is, outside of that, I can't say the novel worked for me. Everything outside of those parts felt more like padding or thin context as opposed to a real, detailed story. The Mind Reels feels like it is stuck between two potentials, and we got something that isn't the best realization of either possibility. What could've been a great short story or series of fiction-articles is instead a short novel that feels too-long. Alternatively, I think it could've been a more effective novel had the prose been more straightforward, if the story let us spent more time with Alice, Sadie, and everyone else. As it is, a lot of it feels flat, but it's a credit to de Boer's work that you still feel the sense of loss as Alice burns her bridges and the awfulness of her general state.

There's a lot that spoke to me, a lot that resonated with me, from going to a small town to a big college and being astounded at it all, to sitting down with a psychologist and having them basically say, oh, you're just in college, that's all normal, maybe it's stress... Those sections were gripping, as were some of the later elements of her working life. But a lot of the rest of it was closer to grueling, and not in a good way. For every sentence, idea, thought, metaphor, or simile that impressed me, it felt as if they were shining jewels in an uneven, clunky sea.

While I can see why de Boer wrote Alice, part of me does wonder if the story wouldn't have been better served by a male protagonist. I was thinking about this a lot as I went through The Mind Reels, which isn't a good sign. There's certainly an element of sexism in how Alice is treated, in much the way conditions like autism or ADHD are often unrecognized in women, and the dangers of sexual assault in vulnerable women, how society views women and their sexuality, how that prompts Alice to behave, etc. but I still don't know if it works to the novel's benefit.

Overall, The Mind Reels ends better than it begins, but I think whatever insights the story has (which it does have) are let down by the methods used to tell it. It's okay -- so, two stars. But a low three for the various times in the novel where everything comes together just right. That said, I'm not sure the note of ambiguity that the novel ends on works particularly well, and I never quite connected with Alice as well as I feel I should've, given the distancing effect of the prose.

[Anna Muthalaly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the top of my head, I can’t think of a better book I’ve read on the topic of mental health and madness.

This is the story of a girl in Oklahoma who, at some point in her freshman year of college, undergoes a psychotic break. This book is really not about depression, as most mental health centered novels seem to be— though a specific diagnosis is never given, it is far more a book about manic psychosis and, more broadly, how large episodes of mental unwellness (and the broader psychiatric practice as a whole) sharply disrupts the trajectory of one’s whole life

This is not a hopeful book. But it is revelatory and, I think for a lot of people, eye opening and necessary. Too many of our most famous novels of “mental breakdowns” center rich girls who are destined for greatness and unable to handle the strain — looking at you The Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted, Prozac Nation, etc etc etc. This is the contrasting story of madness, the breakdown and shame of knowing you are a mediocre person who is dooming yourself to further mediocrity. Our protagonist is a truly average American girl. There is no rich benefactor coming to save her, only her increasingly indebted parents. Harvard is not waiting to publish her memoirs. Her madness is not unlocking genius. It is only dooming her to memory problems so intense she can’t keep her menial jobs, a stream of ruined friendships, the constant need to keep swallowing horse pills and surviving their [literally] shitty effects.

I just loved how honest this book was about a real American life. There is no glamour coming for most. living at home because college loans were too much, staying with middling boyfriends because you need a roommate, avoiding your boss’s creepy eye. The onslaught gets more torrential and even more mundane.

So much not only our depiction but our response to mental health crises are romanticized. What is our response to the lower class, the non creatively talented, the normal person whose mind abandons them. This book is a tormenting wake up call. I’ll be thinking about it for a while.


Also, boo to everyone ragging on the author for being an adult male writing a young woman — speaking as a certified xx young female, I thought this was an excellent depiction, piercing and accurate to a collegiates jealousy and horniness and Halloween induced wrath.