Arden Coover is recent Berkely graduate and drug addict, back at home moving through life as a zoned out reluctant participant in life. His younger sister Tess is nearly just as self-medicated and deciding if she should pursue a loveless yet convenient marriage with a narcissistic writer. Arden’s friend Baxter Kent is a porn addict who can’t seem to find satisfaction in real women. And Ryland Richter is an alcoholic insurance executive who becomes intimately involved with one of his employees. All of these cynical characters are doing their best to survive in Los Angeles while California wildfires close in on their city. The end is near, and nothing matters. And boy do they live each day as their last. But tragically, although expectantly, no amount of self medication will fill the emptiness they each feel. American Narcissus by Chandler Morrison is a dark contemporary fiction that follows four characters as they contribute to their own drug-addled, sex-crazed, self-sabotage with little hope for redemption.
Book
Arden is essentially a zombie that can’t remember most of his college experience, and then some. Even worse is that his degree in Philosophy offers basically no prospects in terms of career potential. But he finally feels something when he begins a casual relationship with a publicist. Unfortunately, it might not be enough to pull himself out of his drugged stupor. Also casually dating someone is his sister Tess, to a famous and self-absorbed writer, Chandler Eastridge. She believed the relationship was only sexual until he proposes a marriage of convenience. Baxter is no longer aroused by women who aren’t digitally altered or performing for a camera. And once he finds his father’s sex robot prototype, he believes he’s found the ideal partner. And Ryland, who begins an inappropriate relationship with his subordinate Lyssi, slowly begins to realize through her unhinged behavior and mood swings that he probably should have run when he had the chance.
American Narcissus is like a train wreck from which you can’t look away. Through each character’s constant alcohol and drug-induced blackouts, sex romps, and poor choices all around, readers get a horror-adjacent story that reminds me of Requiem for a Dream. That being said, I advise concerned readers to look up content warnings for this one. And as we progress through the story, we learn how their paths cross one another, and just how troubled the elite world of LA really is.
Review
Morrison delivers the story in a way that readers feel like they’re experiencing the blackouts with the characters. And even though they are all horrible and have no redeeming qualities, that drives the point home – no amount of drugs, sex, or alcohol can cure the hollowness that one might feel within themselves. Even though some of the dialogue was certainly off-putting and offensive, it was equally thought-provoking. The commentary challenges readers to find the deeper meaning while not losing sight of the big picture. I could see early on that these losers wouldn’t get their happy endings – but I couldn’t stop reading until I learned just how badly things would end. Nor could I predict that I would finish the book with my jaw dropped.
