What do you think?
Rate this book
Meat Puppets
Mitch Larkin has an uncanny knack for knowing when someone will become famous. But when he hedges his bets on a risky asset-the volatile Syd Morris-Mitch realizes he's met his match. Madcap market-manipulation ensues in this stylish satire of aspiring actors and experimental investors.
258 pages, Paperback
Published May 5, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 23, 2026
"He's a bit of a sad klown," Blake added, holding his fists to his eyes and twisting them back and forth in a mock gesture of krying.
I have a simultaneous grievance and compliment which is entirely related to the quote above, which is: Blake and Syd’s chemistry as characters was explosive and I wanted more of it! I don’t know how Smart got that chemistry down so well it’s almost as though she didn’t know she was on fire enough to like pour some gasoline on it. That’s my grievance.
Okay, next up Mitch and Syd’s relationship. I’m not sure I’ve digested it yet I mean I’m writing this the same day I finished it and I wish I’d sticky noted specific moments, but there’s such a nebulous feeling I have for them and their relationship which has got to be intentional as the two don’t exactly know how to fit into the right hole-shaped pieces they need of each other. As absurd as Syd’s history is re father figures it does confuse me but still gives me a weird deep-cutting kinda of distress from it all. And on the Syd subject I felt like cradling him like he was my baby boy. I see some authors try to put their characters into this role of how their other characters and presumably also the audience are meant to perceive them and yet my feelings do not align with them and so break my engagement with the text and sort of distrust the author for not understanding who exactly it is they’re writing—but for Syd it’s another story. For Syd I feel like I wanted to be something of a surrogate father but with some something else mixed in. It was nice to actually get the response to a character that I was asked for by the author.
Circling back to my grievance/compliment, I really did feel that I wanted so much more time with Blake/Syd’s and Mitch/Syd’s relationships (also Glen/Syd’s. IDK probably I’m just greedy but I think the I guess the way Smart’s expertise lies in the way she unfurls a relationship for us. That’s the sparkle that caught my eye. And in a way, and I know this is once again catering to my own tastes, in a way its meta-ness (which I know is central and key and I was interested in the nebulosity of this journalistic fiction within a fiction and the idea of mistrusting a meat puppet because I was sitting near that ending thinking jesus character Hannah’s some kind of monster right now) but its meta-ness FOR ME was a downgrade to what I love to focus on in Smart’s work, which conflicts with the way she wants to and can use that meta weapon quite acutely and severely, and so can’t really qualify as a general complaint about a shortcoming because it can only shortcome if it shoots for the goal and doesn’t get there. Which it does get there, meta-wise. If any of that garble makes sense.
One real disadvantage I do think is that if you’ve read DFW then he’s really inescapably there and present on every single page. Smart’s a fantastic author but I think to move even further forth in her career (which is undeniably possible) she needs to pick up Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence.
Anyhow… shoutout to my baby boy Syd<3 hybristophilia wins<3
I have a simultaneous grievance and compliment which is entirely related to the quote above, which is: Blake and Syd’s chemistry as characters was explosive and I wanted more of it! I don’t know how Smart got that chemistry down so well it’s almost as though she didn’t know she was on fire enough to like pour some gasoline on it. That’s my grievance.
Okay, next up Mitch and Syd’s relationship. I’m not sure I’ve digested it yet I mean I’m writing this the same day I finished it and I wish I’d sticky noted specific moments, but there’s such a nebulous feeling I have for them and their relationship which has got to be intentional as the two don’t exactly know how to fit into the right hole-shaped pieces they need of each other. As absurd as Syd’s history is re father figures it does confuse me but still gives me a weird deep-cutting kinda of distress from it all. And on the Syd subject I felt like cradling him like he was my baby boy. I see some authors try to put their characters into this role of how their other characters and presumably also the audience are meant to perceive them and yet my feelings do not align with them and so break my engagement with the text and sort of distrust the author for not understanding who exactly it is they’re writing—but for Syd it’s another story. For Syd I feel like I wanted to be something of a surrogate father but with some something else mixed in. It was nice to actually get the response to a character that I was asked for by the author.
Circling back to my grievance/compliment, I really did feel that I wanted so much more time with Blake/Syd’s and Mitch/Syd’s relationships (also Glen/Syd’s. IDK probably I’m just greedy but I think the I guess the way Smart’s expertise lies in the way she unfurls a relationship for us. That’s the sparkle that caught my eye. And in a way, and I know this is once again catering to my own tastes, in a way its meta-ness (which I know is central and key and I was interested in the nebulosity of this journalistic fiction within a fiction and the idea of mistrusting a meat puppet because I was sitting near that ending thinking jesus character Hannah’s some kind of monster right now) but its meta-ness FOR ME was a downgrade to what I love to focus on in Smart’s work, which conflicts with the way she wants to and can use that meta weapon quite acutely and severely, and so can’t really qualify as a general complaint about a shortcoming because it can only shortcome if it shoots for the goal and doesn’t get there. Which it does get there, meta-wise. If any of that garble makes sense.
One real disadvantage I do think is that if you’ve read DFW then he’s really inescapably there and present on every single page. Smart’s a fantastic author but I think to move even further forth in her career (which is undeniably possible) she needs to pick up Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence.
Anyhow… shoutout to my baby boy Syd<3 hybristophilia wins<3
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 15, 2026
Meat Puppets is great; it's post modern and witty and literary, but filled with tons of pep and energy. The occasionally slow down is done with such intention and pulled off. The twisted and super-faceted relationship between Mitch and Syd just feeds so much drama, in such great prose, that I ended up reading it in two sittings. And once you finish you'll want to loop right back to the start!
My book of the summer.
My book of the summer.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews