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Black Tank
Win a free kindle copy of this book!
6 days and 06:22:15
100 copies available
U.S. only
For four years, Gary has lived by procedure.
He drives the RV he was supposed to share with his wife, Claire, moving from campground to campground and dump station to dump station. At every stop, he follows the same carefully controlled routine. He monitors the park. Measures the variables. Empties the black tank.
And makes certain the procedure never quite finishes.
Now Gary has arrived at Ridgeline State Park, the place Claire circled twice in their road atlas and marked with a star. As afternoon light moves across the landscape exactly as she once described it, a failing valve traps him at the station longer than his protocols allow.
Minute by minute, the systems Gary has built to contain his past begin to break down. Memories of Claire surface alongside the truth of an environmental contamination scandal, eleven years of falsified reports, and the choice that paid for the vehicle carrying him across the country.
While strangers in the campground quietly begin to recognize what Gary has been doing, he must decide whether to repeat the managed departure that has kept him moving for four years or finally complete the procedure.
Set almost entirely over forty mounting minutes, BLACK TANK is a literary psychological suspense novel about grief, moral injury, complicity, and the unbearable distance between knowing the truth and acting on it.
He drives the RV he was supposed to share with his wife, Claire, moving from campground to campground and dump station to dump station. At every stop, he follows the same carefully controlled routine. He monitors the park. Measures the variables. Empties the black tank.
And makes certain the procedure never quite finishes.
Now Gary has arrived at Ridgeline State Park, the place Claire circled twice in their road atlas and marked with a star. As afternoon light moves across the landscape exactly as she once described it, a failing valve traps him at the station longer than his protocols allow.
Minute by minute, the systems Gary has built to contain his past begin to break down. Memories of Claire surface alongside the truth of an environmental contamination scandal, eleven years of falsified reports, and the choice that paid for the vehicle carrying him across the country.
While strangers in the campground quietly begin to recognize what Gary has been doing, he must decide whether to repeat the managed departure that has kept him moving for four years or finally complete the procedure.
Set almost entirely over forty mounting minutes, BLACK TANK is a literary psychological suspense novel about grief, moral injury, complicity, and the unbearable distance between knowing the truth and acting on it.
145 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 25, 2026
About the author
Wade Prull
2 books9 followersWade Prull writes literary fiction from the American Northeast. His work explores the American landscape, overlooked places, and the people shaped by them.
His fiction is interested in the spaces between action and consequence, where routine, memory, and place quietly reveal the lives people have built for themselves. Drawing on the landscapes of the Northeast, his work blends literary fiction with psychological suspense to examine grief, moral responsibility, and the stories people tell themselves in order to keep moving forward.
His fiction is interested in the spaces between action and consequence, where routine, memory, and place quietly reveal the lives people have built for themselves. Drawing on the landscapes of the Northeast, his work blends literary fiction with psychological suspense to examine grief, moral responsibility, and the stories people tell themselves in order to keep moving forward.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 25, 2026
Wade really knows how to make me anxious 😭 The anticipation of everything slowly being revealed had my heart RACING. I was flying through this book trying to figure out what was going on.
The craziest part is that this entire story takes place over 40 minutes and Gary is basically in the same freaking spot the whole time. Like physically, this story is not going anywhere 😂 He is at the RV park doing the same thing he was doing on page one, but somehow SO MUCH happens.
I don’t even know how to explain it, but I was so anxious the entire time. The way Wade slowly gives you pieces of Gary’s past, the environmental scandal, Claire, and everything else had me sitting there like 👀 okayyyy what the hell is happening.
I also really liked how detail and number focused Gary is. He is SO locked in on everything around him, and I swear that made me even more anxious because I was paying attention to every little thing too.
I’ve genuinely never read anything quite like this. It’s wild that a story can feel like it’s moving so fast when the main character is literally standing in the same spot for most of it 😂
And that ending??? BRUH. WTF WAS THAT 😭😭 Is that a huge cliffhanger or did I just not put some of the pieces together?? Either way, I loved it.
Definitely one of those books where you just sit there in silence afterward like… okay, I need to process that lmao.
The craziest part is that this entire story takes place over 40 minutes and Gary is basically in the same freaking spot the whole time. Like physically, this story is not going anywhere 😂 He is at the RV park doing the same thing he was doing on page one, but somehow SO MUCH happens.
I don’t even know how to explain it, but I was so anxious the entire time. The way Wade slowly gives you pieces of Gary’s past, the environmental scandal, Claire, and everything else had me sitting there like 👀 okayyyy what the hell is happening.
I also really liked how detail and number focused Gary is. He is SO locked in on everything around him, and I swear that made me even more anxious because I was paying attention to every little thing too.
I’ve genuinely never read anything quite like this. It’s wild that a story can feel like it’s moving so fast when the main character is literally standing in the same spot for most of it 😂
And that ending??? BRUH. WTF WAS THAT 😭😭 Is that a huge cliffhanger or did I just not put some of the pieces together?? Either way, I loved it.
Definitely one of those books where you just sit there in silence afterward like… okay, I need to process that lmao.
September 2, 2026
Black Tank by Wade Prull is a literary psychological thriller that transforms an ordinary RV dump station into the setting for an unnervingly intimate examination of grief, guilt and moral accountability. Gary, a former infrastructure engineer travelling alone, has developed an exacting ritual for emptying his motorhome’s black-water tank. He records temperatures, calculates the movements of other campers and monitors every sound, surface and possible observer. When a valve refuses to function correctly at Ridgeline State Park, however, the routine begins to unravel, and the longer Gary remains beside the open system, the more difficult it becomes for him to keep the past contained.
Prull’s most impressive achievement is Gary’s voice. His thoughts move through measurements, categories, tolerances and failure protocols, creating a consciousness that is both highly intelligent and profoundly unreliable. Gary does not necessarily lie to the reader; instead, he converts everything he cannot emotionally endure into technical language. The “Maintenance Tips” preceding each chapter are particularly effective, functioning as practical instructions, psychological commandments and increasingly ominous reflections on containment. The black tank itself becomes a powerful metaphor for everything left untreated: grief, complicity, memory and the consequences of believing that careful management can substitute for genuine reckoning.
Beneath its disturbing premise, the novel is also an affecting portrait of a marriage understood too late. Claire emerges through small remembered details. These recollections gradually reveal the difference between observing a life and fully inhabiting it. Prull connects Gary’s private history to his professional involvement in an environmental contamination scandal, allowing the same patterns of concealment, compromised data and deferred responsibility to operate at both personal and institutional levels. The nurse-like camp host and the experienced observer in the grey RV add external pressure, yet the novel’s most consequential confrontation remains the one occurring inside Gary’s own rigorously compartmentalised mind.
The novel’s deliberate repetition successfully recreates obsessive thought, although it occasionally works against the accumulating tension. Phrases surrounding the hose, the gauge, the light, the camp chair and Gary’s refusal to begin his “managed departure” are reiterated so frequently that their emotional force begins to diminish, particularly through the middle chapters. A leaner version, trusting the reader to retain these motifs without repeatedly restating their significance, would make Gary’s psychological collapse feel even sharper. The two perceptive observers also remain largely functional figures rather than fully realised individuals; giving them slightly more texture could have made the external world feel as immediate as Gary’s internal one.
Nevertheless, Black Tank is a formally controlled, unsettling and unexpectedly moving novel about the terrible limitations of compartmentalisation. Prull understands that guilt cannot be processed through distance, grief cannot be converted into procedure, and a life cannot be repaired solely by identifying its points of failure. The final movement is satisfyingly restrained, locating its power in release, presence and the decision to stop fleeing rather than in spectacle. Readers who appreciate literary suspense, morally compromised narrators and psychologically exacting fiction will find much to admire in this unusual and haunting book.
Prull’s most impressive achievement is Gary’s voice. His thoughts move through measurements, categories, tolerances and failure protocols, creating a consciousness that is both highly intelligent and profoundly unreliable. Gary does not necessarily lie to the reader; instead, he converts everything he cannot emotionally endure into technical language. The “Maintenance Tips” preceding each chapter are particularly effective, functioning as practical instructions, psychological commandments and increasingly ominous reflections on containment. The black tank itself becomes a powerful metaphor for everything left untreated: grief, complicity, memory and the consequences of believing that careful management can substitute for genuine reckoning.
Beneath its disturbing premise, the novel is also an affecting portrait of a marriage understood too late. Claire emerges through small remembered details. These recollections gradually reveal the difference between observing a life and fully inhabiting it. Prull connects Gary’s private history to his professional involvement in an environmental contamination scandal, allowing the same patterns of concealment, compromised data and deferred responsibility to operate at both personal and institutional levels. The nurse-like camp host and the experienced observer in the grey RV add external pressure, yet the novel’s most consequential confrontation remains the one occurring inside Gary’s own rigorously compartmentalised mind.
The novel’s deliberate repetition successfully recreates obsessive thought, although it occasionally works against the accumulating tension. Phrases surrounding the hose, the gauge, the light, the camp chair and Gary’s refusal to begin his “managed departure” are reiterated so frequently that their emotional force begins to diminish, particularly through the middle chapters. A leaner version, trusting the reader to retain these motifs without repeatedly restating their significance, would make Gary’s psychological collapse feel even sharper. The two perceptive observers also remain largely functional figures rather than fully realised individuals; giving them slightly more texture could have made the external world feel as immediate as Gary’s internal one.
Nevertheless, Black Tank is a formally controlled, unsettling and unexpectedly moving novel about the terrible limitations of compartmentalisation. Prull understands that guilt cannot be processed through distance, grief cannot be converted into procedure, and a life cannot be repaired solely by identifying its points of failure. The final movement is satisfyingly restrained, locating its power in release, presence and the decision to stop fleeing rather than in spectacle. Readers who appreciate literary suspense, morally compromised narrators and psychologically exacting fiction will find much to admire in this unusual and haunting book.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Wade Prull’s Black Tank is a tightly focused literary novel about Gary, a former infrastructure specialist who has spent four years traveling alone in an RV after the death of his wife, Claire. The story unfolds during roughly forty minutes at a state park dump station, where Gary performs a maintenance routine he’s repeated more than a hundred times. He studies every person, sound, movement, and mechanical reading around him, partly out of professional habit and partly because constant observation keeps him from confronting what he’s carrying. As the procedure begins to fail, memories of Claire, his former career, and a contaminated public water system rise into the present. What starts as an oddly tense account of emptying an RV tank becomes a confession about grief, guilt, and the exhausting work of keeping painful truths contained.
The novel’s most distinctive feature is Gary’s voice. He translates nearly every emotion into the language of gauges, pressure, chemistry, capacity, and system failure. That language can be funny in its extreme precision, especially when he calculates trail times or classifies ordinary campground behavior, but it also shows how completely he’s built his life around avoidance. The maintenance tips between chapters deepen this effect. Each one seems to describe equipment while quietly explaining Gary’s emotional condition. Prull commits fully to this structure, and the repetition gives the book a steady, pressurized rhythm. Small actions, such as a camper opening a door or Gary shifting his foot, carry the suspense of major events because we experience them through a mind that treats uncertainty as danger.
Gary reminded me of Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Both men hide inside professional competence, speak in controlled and specialized language, and gradually reveal that their loyalty to procedure has helped them avoid moral responsibility. Stevens uses dignity and service to organize his memories, while Gary uses engineering logic and maintenance protocols. Prull’s approach is more physically immediate, with the malfunctioning tank and hose turning Gary’s inner life into something he has to hold in his hands. Like Ishiguro, Prull trusts the reader to notice the emotional truth before the narrator can say it. Gary’s eventual use of Claire’s name feels powerful because the entire book has shown how carefully he’s kept that name outside his operating system.
Black Tank is ultimately about a man discovering that grief can’t be processed like waste and guilt can’t be managed through motion. Gary’s technical language remains central to the end, but its meaning changes as he begins to listen to his own internal gauge. The final image of him releasing the hose and preparing to retrieve the camp chair Claire packed gives the novel a moving sense of completion without pretending that one honest moment repairs years of damage. Prull turns an unglamorous maintenance task into an intimate study of accountability and survival. It’s a strange premise, handled with remarkable seriousness and control, and the result stayed with me long after Gary’s forty minutes at the station were over.
The novel’s most distinctive feature is Gary’s voice. He translates nearly every emotion into the language of gauges, pressure, chemistry, capacity, and system failure. That language can be funny in its extreme precision, especially when he calculates trail times or classifies ordinary campground behavior, but it also shows how completely he’s built his life around avoidance. The maintenance tips between chapters deepen this effect. Each one seems to describe equipment while quietly explaining Gary’s emotional condition. Prull commits fully to this structure, and the repetition gives the book a steady, pressurized rhythm. Small actions, such as a camper opening a door or Gary shifting his foot, carry the suspense of major events because we experience them through a mind that treats uncertainty as danger.
Gary reminded me of Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Both men hide inside professional competence, speak in controlled and specialized language, and gradually reveal that their loyalty to procedure has helped them avoid moral responsibility. Stevens uses dignity and service to organize his memories, while Gary uses engineering logic and maintenance protocols. Prull’s approach is more physically immediate, with the malfunctioning tank and hose turning Gary’s inner life into something he has to hold in his hands. Like Ishiguro, Prull trusts the reader to notice the emotional truth before the narrator can say it. Gary’s eventual use of Claire’s name feels powerful because the entire book has shown how carefully he’s kept that name outside his operating system.
Black Tank is ultimately about a man discovering that grief can’t be processed like waste and guilt can’t be managed through motion. Gary’s technical language remains central to the end, but its meaning changes as he begins to listen to his own internal gauge. The final image of him releasing the hose and preparing to retrieve the camp chair Claire packed gives the novel a moving sense of completion without pretending that one honest moment repairs years of damage. Prull turns an unglamorous maintenance task into an intimate study of accountability and survival. It’s a strange premise, handled with remarkable seriousness and control, and the result stayed with me long after Gary’s forty minutes at the station were over.
August 29, 2026
Following a meticulous procedure and with keen observational skills that note everything in his surroundings, a man reaches a critical decision point in his years of travel in Black Tank by Wade Prull.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
The RV that he’s been traveling in for the past four years was supposed to be a shared journey with his wife, Claire, who provided valuable input on its selection, but instead Gary has had the company of his memories and a procedure. At Ridgeline State Park, the location Claire had marked in their atlas, Gary begins the process of emptying the RV’s black tank; however, the strictly observed maintenance process breaks down, in part due to a failing valve, extending the time taken beyond reasonable expectations and during which his mind revisits memories of the numerous choices and actions related to his job and interactions with Claire that led him to where he is now and the new decision he ultimately has to face.
A quickly moving story that takes place within a forty-minute timeframe, expanded by memories that add background to Gary’s character and the scenario that is filled with anxious tension, the brief narrative explores large topics such as the consequences of silence and complicity, suppressing emotion or thoughts, guilt and grief, and running from problems instead of confronting them. While the presentation of information had repetition and could be a bit dry, as there’s a focus on the mechanical and routine that comes from the character’s personality, that emphasis within the writing suits the purpose well in depicting the character. There are a lot of details provided from the vigilant observations that create an inventory of facts collected into data offered to readers from one man’s very narrow, precise perspective; with such an abundance of detail it should be clear what all has occurred, but understanding is what’s shown to be in a state of being figured out, with enough being left unsaid or said in an oblique enough way to allow readers to interpret or extrapolate from their imaginations to form their own understandings just as Gary forms his.
*I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
The RV that he’s been traveling in for the past four years was supposed to be a shared journey with his wife, Claire, who provided valuable input on its selection, but instead Gary has had the company of his memories and a procedure. At Ridgeline State Park, the location Claire had marked in their atlas, Gary begins the process of emptying the RV’s black tank; however, the strictly observed maintenance process breaks down, in part due to a failing valve, extending the time taken beyond reasonable expectations and during which his mind revisits memories of the numerous choices and actions related to his job and interactions with Claire that led him to where he is now and the new decision he ultimately has to face.
A quickly moving story that takes place within a forty-minute timeframe, expanded by memories that add background to Gary’s character and the scenario that is filled with anxious tension, the brief narrative explores large topics such as the consequences of silence and complicity, suppressing emotion or thoughts, guilt and grief, and running from problems instead of confronting them. While the presentation of information had repetition and could be a bit dry, as there’s a focus on the mechanical and routine that comes from the character’s personality, that emphasis within the writing suits the purpose well in depicting the character. There are a lot of details provided from the vigilant observations that create an inventory of facts collected into data offered to readers from one man’s very narrow, precise perspective; with such an abundance of detail it should be clear what all has occurred, but understanding is what’s shown to be in a state of being figured out, with enough being left unsaid or said in an oblique enough way to allow readers to interpret or extrapolate from their imaginations to form their own understandings just as Gary forms his.
*I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
August 21, 2026
Disclaimer #1: The author sent me a physical ARC of Black Tank, which he very kindly signed, in exchange for an honest review.
Disclaimer #2: I rate books by ⭐️ based on how they make me feel. It’s not a scorecard for writing, plot, structure, or literary merit.
————————————
“It is worth noting, clinically, that I have spent approximately sixty-seven thousand miles on the road in order to stand at a dump station for nineteen minutes.”
This is Gary.
And I became completely invested in Gary.
He records everything. The awning. The paperback. Departure times. Changes in readings. The precise way Claire holds her coffee cup. Everything is observed, catalogued and filed away.
The writing is incredibly precise, but somehow the more Gary observes, the less certain I became about what he actually understands. He can tell us exactly what someone does without necessarily understanding what it means. And somehow those incredibly detailed observations become some of the most emotional parts of the book.
The repetition works beautifully too. Gary returns to facts, measurements and phrases again and again, almost like he’s using them to keep himself regulated and on track. He knows the facts. He knows the numbers. He knows what he has observed.
People are harder.
I spent much of the book trying to figure Gary out.
Is his relentless cataloguing a coping mechanism? Compulsion? Hypervigilance? Paranoia? Is he neurodivergent? Is he traumatised? Is he simply a man who has constructed an extraordinarily rigid system for surviving a world he no longer trusts?
I never felt confident enough to pin him down, and by the end, I wasn’t sure I was supposed to.
Gary just is.
And then there’s Claire:
“She told me that I was the most efficient sad person she had ever met.”
“I said: I’m not sad.”
“She said: I know.”
Oof. Savage!
I had about 20 pages left and realised I didn’t want to finish because I didn’t want Gary to no longer be in my life.
Naturally, I then flew through the final pages.
Disclaimer #2: I rate books by ⭐️ based on how they make me feel. It’s not a scorecard for writing, plot, structure, or literary merit.
————————————
“It is worth noting, clinically, that I have spent approximately sixty-seven thousand miles on the road in order to stand at a dump station for nineteen minutes.”
This is Gary.
And I became completely invested in Gary.
He records everything. The awning. The paperback. Departure times. Changes in readings. The precise way Claire holds her coffee cup. Everything is observed, catalogued and filed away.
The writing is incredibly precise, but somehow the more Gary observes, the less certain I became about what he actually understands. He can tell us exactly what someone does without necessarily understanding what it means. And somehow those incredibly detailed observations become some of the most emotional parts of the book.
The repetition works beautifully too. Gary returns to facts, measurements and phrases again and again, almost like he’s using them to keep himself regulated and on track. He knows the facts. He knows the numbers. He knows what he has observed.
People are harder.
I spent much of the book trying to figure Gary out.
Is his relentless cataloguing a coping mechanism? Compulsion? Hypervigilance? Paranoia? Is he neurodivergent? Is he traumatised? Is he simply a man who has constructed an extraordinarily rigid system for surviving a world he no longer trusts?
I never felt confident enough to pin him down, and by the end, I wasn’t sure I was supposed to.
Gary just is.
And then there’s Claire:
“She told me that I was the most efficient sad person she had ever met.”
“I said: I’m not sad.”
“She said: I know.”
Oof. Savage!
I had about 20 pages left and realised I didn’t want to finish because I didn’t want Gary to no longer be in my life.
Naturally, I then flew through the final pages.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Wow. 4.5star
Gary does not like things that resist classification. Though I have no idea how to classify this novella myself, boy did I LOVE IT.
I want to start by saying this story will not be for everyone. That’s pretty vague and said all the time, so here’s a snippet from the beginning, which also represents the whole:
“Everything that can be measured is within tolerance. The gauge in my head is not within tolerance but the gauge in my head is not a thing I measure with instruments. It is the thing the instruments are supposed to allow me to ignore. The internal reading that the external monitoring was built to manage. I have been managing it for four years. The management is producing different results at this station than at the previous one hundred and eleven. I hold the hose. I breathe through my nose. I look at the light.”
The ENTIRE story is written in this manner, from the internal monologue of our MMC. If Gary isn’t neurodivergent, then I don’t know what neurodivergence is. He prioritizes information, so he watches, he takes notes, he categorizes and compares. And then we repeat, repeat, repeat. “I have learned not to examine the gap between true things.” I’m baffled at how the author was able to say thing’s without actually saying it, like it’s the little things we take for granted and how sometimes it’s too little, too late. And when Gary is saying this without saying it, my heart broke. There’s so much guilt and regret and at the conclusion of this story that’s a total of 40min, we are seeing Gary, for the first time, interpreting the culmination of his actions and feelings up to this point; - DESPITE “memory is interpretation and interpretation is not data” 🥲
This does end on somewhat of a cliffhanger (or I missed something) so that may be upsetting to some. I will promptly be contacting the author because I have questions! Regardless, WOW. This comes out tomorrow…PLEASE give this a try.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.
Gary does not like things that resist classification. Though I have no idea how to classify this novella myself, boy did I LOVE IT.
I want to start by saying this story will not be for everyone. That’s pretty vague and said all the time, so here’s a snippet from the beginning, which also represents the whole:
“Everything that can be measured is within tolerance. The gauge in my head is not within tolerance but the gauge in my head is not a thing I measure with instruments. It is the thing the instruments are supposed to allow me to ignore. The internal reading that the external monitoring was built to manage. I have been managing it for four years. The management is producing different results at this station than at the previous one hundred and eleven. I hold the hose. I breathe through my nose. I look at the light.”
The ENTIRE story is written in this manner, from the internal monologue of our MMC. If Gary isn’t neurodivergent, then I don’t know what neurodivergence is. He prioritizes information, so he watches, he takes notes, he categorizes and compares. And then we repeat, repeat, repeat. “I have learned not to examine the gap between true things.” I’m baffled at how the author was able to say thing’s without actually saying it, like it’s the little things we take for granted and how sometimes it’s too little, too late. And when Gary is saying this without saying it, my heart broke. There’s so much guilt and regret and at the conclusion of this story that’s a total of 40min, we are seeing Gary, for the first time, interpreting the culmination of his actions and feelings up to this point; - DESPITE “memory is interpretation and interpretation is not data” 🥲
This does end on somewhat of a cliffhanger (or I missed something) so that may be upsetting to some. I will promptly be contacting the author because I have questions! Regardless, WOW. This comes out tomorrow…PLEASE give this a try.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.
August 31, 2026
3.25/5
In a nutshell: the story was decent, but I was not a fan of the writing style or the pacing.
Other reviewers note that they felt a great deal of tension and anxiety reading this, but I'm over here scratching my head and wondering how someone could react to the prose that way. To me it was emotionless. Gary's thoughts and actions are repetitive and robotic. This is supposed to give the impression of avoidance, dissociation, guilt, etc. - but this kind of clipped and repetitive writing style makes me feel as detached from the story as Gary feels from himself. So while I understand *why* the prose is as it is, it doesn't make it less unpleasant to read. And I don't always hate repetition in prose - books like The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat and The Sofa by Sam Munson are very repetitive, but the repetition is propulsive and the impact of it builds over time, while here it remains flat.
As I went on I was hoping that bits of emotion might start leaking through, a slight break in the control, something that would make Gary sound less like a (broken) computer...
it never happens. Not really. There are moments that come close/tease this happening, but then his thought process goes back to how it was with no meaningful change. The whole book is written in this style.
On top of this, I also could not sympathize with Gary. Everything that happened was his own fault. He could have made different choices, but he didn't - nobody forced him to take the actions that put him in his current position. So I was not very invested in how he resolved this dilemma internally. The narrative seemed to imply that the reader should relate on some level - but I thought he should lie in the bed he made for himself.
Not for me, but might be for someone else. Interesting, but not so compelling that I would be moved to check out anything else by this author.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
#BlackTank #NetGalley
In a nutshell: the story was decent, but I was not a fan of the writing style or the pacing.
Other reviewers note that they felt a great deal of tension and anxiety reading this, but I'm over here scratching my head and wondering how someone could react to the prose that way. To me it was emotionless. Gary's thoughts and actions are repetitive and robotic. This is supposed to give the impression of avoidance, dissociation, guilt, etc. - but this kind of clipped and repetitive writing style makes me feel as detached from the story as Gary feels from himself. So while I understand *why* the prose is as it is, it doesn't make it less unpleasant to read. And I don't always hate repetition in prose - books like The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat and The Sofa by Sam Munson are very repetitive, but the repetition is propulsive and the impact of it builds over time, while here it remains flat.
As I went on I was hoping that bits of emotion might start leaking through, a slight break in the control, something that would make Gary sound less like a (broken) computer...
it never happens. Not really. There are moments that come close/tease this happening, but then his thought process goes back to how it was with no meaningful change. The whole book is written in this style.
On top of this, I also could not sympathize with Gary. Everything that happened was his own fault. He could have made different choices, but he didn't - nobody forced him to take the actions that put him in his current position. So I was not very invested in how he resolved this dilemma internally. The narrative seemed to imply that the reader should relate on some level - but I thought he should lie in the bed he made for himself.
Not for me, but might be for someone else. Interesting, but not so compelling that I would be moved to check out anything else by this author.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
#BlackTank #NetGalley
August 31, 2026
This is a tight, claustrophobic little novella that turns one unglamorous task—emptying an RV black tank—into a pressure cooker. Gary has spent four years living by procedure: campground to dump station, same ritual, never quite finishing. When a failing valve traps him at Ridgeline State Park (the place his late wife marked with a star), the systems he’s used to keep grief and guilt in check start to crack.
I respected what it was trying to do. The compressed timeline, the way ordinary maintenance becomes a stand-in for moral injury and the things he won’t face, the slow leak of the past (Claire, the contamination scandal, the choice that paid for the RV)—it’s all controlled and quietly unsettling. It has more in common with a literary character study than the twisty domestic thrillers I usually reach for.
That’s also why it didn’t fully land for me. I kept waiting for the story to open up or snap into a sharper hook, and it stays inside Gary’s head and that dump station for almost the entire runtime. Smart, well-written, and it lingered, but I wanted more propulsion than it was willing to give.
If you like interior, real-time psychological tension more than plot fireworks, this will probably hit harder than it did for me. I liked it. I just didn’t love it.
I respected what it was trying to do. The compressed timeline, the way ordinary maintenance becomes a stand-in for moral injury and the things he won’t face, the slow leak of the past (Claire, the contamination scandal, the choice that paid for the RV)—it’s all controlled and quietly unsettling. It has more in common with a literary character study than the twisty domestic thrillers I usually reach for.
That’s also why it didn’t fully land for me. I kept waiting for the story to open up or snap into a sharper hook, and it stays inside Gary’s head and that dump station for almost the entire runtime. Smart, well-written, and it lingered, but I wanted more propulsion than it was willing to give.
If you like interior, real-time psychological tension more than plot fireworks, this will probably hit harder than it did for me. I liked it. I just didn’t love it.
August 22, 2026
Tautly written and filled with technical observations this is an exploration of grief and guilt, which may feel incredibly recognizable to anyone who has ever experienced a hyper cerebral disassociative state. It is definitely more of a character study than a highly plotted novel and more a close examination of one character than an exploration of a cast. But that exploration and the way it slowly reveals the protagonist losses and regrets is written in a way that is controlled, precise and compelling.
The one minor criticism I could offer is that the incredibly tight focus means that everyone else who appears in the story either past or present is much more an observed figure than a flushed out character.
The one minor criticism I could offer is that the incredibly tight focus means that everyone else who appears in the story either past or present is much more an observed figure than a flushed out character.
Review of advance copy received from Author
rating: 3.5 to 4 stars. Black Tank was such an interesting and tense read. It’s short, but there’s a lot packed into the story.
It reminded me a bit of I Who Have Never Known Men. We’re given pieces of Gary’s story through his observations and flashbacks, while being left to fill in some of the blanks ourselves. Gary’s internal monologue sometimes comes across as robotic, which made him an interesting character to follow.
The book also touches on grief, loss, and the moral implications of being caught up in an environmental scandal.
Thank you to the author for sharing a copy of the book with me.
It reminded me a bit of I Who Have Never Known Men. We’re given pieces of Gary’s story through his observations and flashbacks, while being left to fill in some of the blanks ourselves. Gary’s internal monologue sometimes comes across as robotic, which made him an interesting character to follow.
The book also touches on grief, loss, and the moral implications of being caught up in an environmental scandal.
Thank you to the author for sharing a copy of the book with me.
August 25, 2026
Maybe I didn’t get it? Maybe the writing style wasn’t my thing. I don’t know. It wasn’t bad by any means. But it was not something I normally would seek out.
It was very descriptive and detailed in what observations Gary had. I didn’t really get all the nuanced feelings he was having.
That being said I do think that some people may enjoy this. It is written within a 40 minute timeframe and you get his stream of consciousness through that entire time. So if that’s something you may be interested in this would be for you.
It was very descriptive and detailed in what observations Gary had. I didn’t really get all the nuanced feelings he was having.
That being said I do think that some people may enjoy this. It is written within a 40 minute timeframe and you get his stream of consciousness through that entire time. So if that’s something you may be interested in this would be for you.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of Black Tank by Wade Prull. Interesting read, but not everyone will get it. Read the description, this is literally the book from beginning to end. Cliff hanger!
August 31, 2026
The most compelling description of a man standing still, looking nonchalant, for 39 minutes I have ever read. If you are up for a bit of a literary fiction that is simultaneously repetitive and elegant in its economy, go for it!
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