Tournament of Books discussion

Space to discuss the 2026 TOB contender The Mind Reels by Fredrik deBoer.

I'm not too familiar with the controversies surrounding the author, so I'll just discuss the book now while it's most fresh in my mind and since there's little chance I'll read it again.

It was good. Well-written, narratively propulsive, I found our main character's descent fairly believable/credible, as well as her travails with the medical establishment. I did feel like I was watching a slow car crash at the time and the end of the book I found wrenching. It was a solid loosey-goosey 3.5-4 star book for me.

Agreed, Bob. I had low expectations from comments here and also I'm not a fan of following someone's drug trips, drunken feelings, or dream retellings and I was anticipating a lot of all that. However this was in fact a well-done novel mostly about mental illness, with some drugs and alcohol on the side.

I thought it was extremely well done. Five stars for me.

Does it/would it work as an audiobook? I could only find it on Audible.

I would say it would work on audio. It’s short and engaging and the narrative is easy to follow

I did audio for this one and it was good.

I’m hoping between this and The Passenger Seat I accidentally picked two of the most depressing books to start with this year. Yeesh that was tough to read, partly because parts of it overlapped so closely with my work trying to support undergraduate students in academic crisis.

I didn’t feel like this had any political agenda, for those commenting earlier about the author. My only complaint was that sexual proclivity was such a significant part of the female character’s unnamed mental illness, creating an awkward space for me to contemplate if the male author was basing that on reality from researching a specific ailment or his imagination.

I found the book very readable, fast paced, engaging. I liked the jumps in time, but sometimes struggled with the transitions.

McKenzie, I struggled with the way he wrote her sexuality also. Especially at the beginning it very much felt like a man's idea of female sexuality.

I actually looked for more information after I finished the book about DeBoer's experience or research on the book and learned that he does have bipolar disorder, and lists "hypersexuality" as a component. It's interesting that he chose his character to be female.

He says "it’s just easier to shock people with a story about an ordinary adolescent girl than with an adult man. (One core experience I wanted to portray was hypersexuality, a very common symptom, which wouldn’t have been possible if my protagonist had been a college-aged man; college-aged men are always hypersexual.)"
https://shelfmediagroup.com/interview...

One thing I'm thinking about a lot now is that when I first went looking for more info, I found his substack, which starts with "cool but rude" and left me feeling icky about him. But then when I read the article about his struggles with mental illness, and writing the book, it made me reconsider. But I don't want to give jerks a "pass" for having a mental illness. I know a lot of people communicate and engage with people in different ways, so what comes off as rude or direct can be a lot of things. But not all people who have issues are rude either...

Bretnie wrote: "I found the book very readable, fast paced, engaging. I liked the jumps in time, but sometimes struggled with the transitions.

McKenzie, I struggled with the way he wrote her sexuality also. Espe..."

Very interesting, thanks for sharing what you found with your internet sleuthing!

Oh, random, but did anyone else think the narrator's short story she was writing was basically the movie Labyrinth? Ha. :)

I liked this. I listened to the audiobook, and it worked very well in that format. The story seemed credible to me—I.e. I believed the protagonist’s slow slide into mental illness. I’m very curious about the ending. Which decision did she make?