A hot air balloon crashes in your backyard during a first date. 

Sounds like a free-writing prompt, right? That’s what I love about Marcy Dermansky’s writing: Her stories feel like someone tossed her a one-line writing prompt and she said, “Hold my beer,” and then wrote a whole book around that prompt made of a single line. Like an improvised, but genius novel, and she just keeps doing it. 

As always, the focus of Hot Air is on the characters, and there is brilliant work done here with these messy, mostly-white (which is somewhat acknowledged) people. They vary in gender, employment, housing, stages of life, and economical means. One way in which none of them vary? They’re all completely self-involved, some to the point of cruel and criminal behavior. There’s only one truly redeemable person in the whole book, and she happens to be under the age of ten. 

Why would I enjoy a book about a bunch of unlikeable, messy people? Because I enjoy reading about bad people making bad decisions and having to think about all the bad things they’ve done and feel guilty about it for a little while. Is it going to change who they are or how they do things long term? No, because it doesn’t even do that in real life. People don’t change. They talk big, but they act little. Hence the title of this book: It’s all hot air. 4⭐️

I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: Dark Comedy/Literary Fiction