Troll

Troll

Here you are, shopping for books online because honestly, who has the energy to go out anymore? There are so many people out there, all buying the same Oprah-stickered crap to take to the coffee shop and Instagram next to their PSLs and blueberry muffins with one perfect bite taken out (or pretend to read until their latest Tinder date shows up). It's insufferable - the performance of it all - and everyone knows small presses are where the real literary vanguard is happening these days anyway. Well, maybe not everyone. But that's kind of the point of your being here, isn't it? You consider yourself something of a snob when it comes to your reading choices, though not in a pretentious way. You're discerning is all. A serious person of uniquely refined and sophisticated tastes. Perhaps you felt drawn to click on this particular novel due to its provocative, all-caps title, or the cheeky contrast between its memeified typeface and classical-realist cover art. Perhaps you were intrigued by the blurbs and social media chatter invoking transgressive iconoclasts like Michel Houellebecq, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk. Or perhaps you're already an acolyte of this particular indie press and its stated mission of "degeneracy and degradation." You are, after all, the kind of unflappable literary deviant who actively seeks to have your ethical buttons pushed and your moral boundaries tested. The kind who enjoys nothing quite so much as a vicarious tramp through such aberrantly foul and filthy lives as you could never dare live yourself. And the kind who, even while wallowing in narcissism and self-loathing at your own complicity in same, feels such a profoundly personal anguish at the ongoing commodification of all art beneath the endless crush of content culture that you probably think this book is about you, (don't you? Don't you?). And quite frankly, if you've read this far, then maybe it is. Maybe you are exactly who this book is about. And by. And for. And as such, maybe you should give it a look, and let the world know exactly what you think. It's not like anyone reads anymore anyway. They're all too busy watching, and posting, and "liking" and "following" to notice a true original like you. So what's the difference? Why shouldn't you add your voice to the fray? After all, nothing matters these days quite so much as what you think about it. And as you've already mentioned, you do have excellent taste. Fight Club for the Twitter generation. A bold, subversive punk rock debut that's as incisive and provocative as it is hilariously uncomfortable. - Preston Fassel, author of Our Lady of the Inferno Flannery O'Connor wrote that fiction is not an escape but rather 'a plunge into reality, and it's very shocking to the system.' This is an apt description of Dave Fitzgerald's audacious debut novel. Not for the faint of heart, Troll drags us into the murky, chaotic interior of its nameless protagonist, an unholy combination of Patrick Bateman, Rabbit Angstrom, and someone entirely new - a 21st century Frankenstein's monster who is not only influenced by but stitched together from the body parts of pop culture, post-postmodern ennui, and the Id-gone-wild sadism of the faceless Internet. Worst yet is the knowledge that we not only helped create the monster, but we are complicit in its thriving. - Darrin Doyle, author of The Beast in Aisle 34 Talk about your entertaining novels, Dave Fitzgerald has written one. I was all in, jumpshots that clip to cumshots, some near-bioluminescent glow, I felt like I was driving a hovercraft while wearing a ski mask, Troll is audacious, advanced, untried, and ground-breaking. It's the good shit. A novel where world-making involves sea breezes and briefcases, chicken nuggets and swingset sweethearts, social movements, and gutter water. Wooden alphabet blocks in the donation bin, analgesia, faecal matter, and human selfies on several fronts. Get all in with Dave Fitzgerald, it's a wild ride, it's a novel and a movie, and a stage production all in one. A dissident mythical peach. A darkly side-splitting odyssey. Get all in y'hear. - Shane Jesse Christmass, author of Yeezus in Furs Shot through with strange beauty, Troll is an uncanny excursion into the warped musings of an unsympathetic troll. In the transgressive tradition of Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares, it brilliantly explores casual depravity: of a culture entrenched in cynical consumption, the inhumanity of anonymity, disconnection, and the psychic stain of nihilism on the human soul. - Matthew Burnside, author of Wiki of Infinite Sorrows Koji Suzuki's novel S describes a haunted spermatozoan that invades your body after reading a particular book. Troll does this. Fitzgerald's relentlessly uncomfortable use of the second person voice has the effect--rather than sweeping 'you' into the book--of porting the book into 'you.' Troll is indeed one haunted gamete. - John Trefry, author of PLATS A lacerating, remor