Rejection

Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection is, as the title suggests, gutting and tough to endure. Throughout a collection of connected stories, Rejection introduces pathetic, sad, and deeply lonely characters who try and fail to find connection in a time when life seems to play out on social media and dating apps, making their IRL emptiness all the more glaring. In one story, “The Feminist,” a man who has always considered himself to be a vocal champion of women finds his performed allyship hasn’t yielded the sex he thinks he has earned. So he devolves and begins posting on the internet’s most hateful forums, becoming more and more convinced that he is right and women are wrong—before turning to a truly dark end. In another, “Pics,” the shallowness of a woman’s friendships become horrifyingly clear in the way Tulathimutte crafts her group-chat conversations: insistently positive messages that evaporate when anyone has a real problem. Tulathimutte’s follow-up to his 2016 novel Private Citizens cleverly satirizes a heartless world while nailing what stings so much about rejection.

Buy Now: Rejection on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble