“Astonishing” doesn’t begin to describe the achievement of Octavian Nothing, which is ostensibly, purportedly, and quite incredibly being marketed as a young-adult novel. The latest from M.T. Anderson, whose previous novel Feed was a National Book Award finalist, is as challenging, brilliant, technically ambitious—and, let’s not forget, jaw-droppingly good—as any book you’ll get your hands on this year. God knows what some fifteen-year-old will make of Anderson’s novel, which is chock-full of startling images, big words, and even bigger questions, but it’ll likely boggle the mind of any reader. Told in what feels like pitch-perfect eighteenth-century prose and set against the tumult of Revolutionary War-era Boston, the plot of Octavian Nothing beggars description. Read it, though, for the pure pleasure of experiencing an incredible imagination at work. If this is the sort of thing teenagers are reading today, well, damn if that isn’t some kind of good news for all of us.
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