FADE AWAY

A listless young man searches for his identity in this debut literary novel.

Jimmy Miller is in his mid-20s, and he’s starting to feel depressed. The activities and people he once found fun just don’t bring him joy anymore. In order to reclaim a bit of the past, he and four friends rent a house on the Jersey shore for the weekend—though they do so, somewhat naïvely, in cold, dreary April. The weekend is a bust. Jimmy tries to make it entertaining, but he can’t make himself feel it. Back at work, he seems stymied. His boss offers him some creative control over a project but then immediately takes it away again. While riding his bike, Jimmy begins to experience what he calls “fades”: “I closed my eyes, listened to my breath, and then opened them…and everything was gone. I heard sounds and saw shapes and colors and light. But I didn’t have any idea what any of it was. I guess it wasn’t really that everything was gone, it was more like I was gone.” He seeks help from therapists and even rabbis, but the fades—and Jimmy’s already poor decision-making skills—only get worse. Can he figure out what’s wrong with him before he disappears completely? The ambitious novel’s premise is a promising one, exploring the mental health problems of a young adult who, despite a relatively comfortable life, lacks the ability to cope with them. But Rider tries too hard to sell readers on Jimmy and his friends’ bonhomie, which mostly consists of uninteresting (and profane) razzing and adolescent excitement at the suggestion of female physicality: “ ‘Easy boys,’ Jodie said as she slipped in between us and put her arms around both of our shoulders. Her breast brushed against my arm and I was struck silent. Judging from Aaron’s silence, I guess the same thing happened to him. Boobs are just magical that way.” What initially seems to be an engrossing book about mental health turns out to be about the pursuit of art, and slacker Jimmy is simply not a compelling would-be artist.

An intriguing but unpersuasive bildungsroman about an aspiring artist.