It’s a difficult task to fully inhabit the interior life of a character while critiquing them. In The Book of George, author Kate Greathead navigates this line exceptionally well.
In her second novel, Greathead hilariously chronicles the poignantly mundane life of George, a man born with every advantage but unable to commit to a job or his girlfriend, Jenny. The narrative follows George from adolescence in the 1990s to his early 40s in 2020, creating a complex yet searingly funny portrait of Millennial masculinity.
At a recent event at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn Heights, Greathead, a Cobble Hill resident, read from the novel and chatted with Teddy Wayne, her husband and also author. She read an excerpt from the book, where George describes looking at an apartment in Brooklyn that Jenny wants to rent and buy chickens to keep in the backyard: “George looked around at the space, which was not very large, and imagined it covered in feathers and bird droppings. He suspected Jenny’s fantasy involved a wicker basket full of eggs, herself in some kind of prairie dress and a pair of wooden clogs. She nurtured childish longings by making George the adversary.”
This combination of a sardonic tone and psychological insight into the dynamics of an intimate relationship is the hallmark of Greathead’s prose.
“I have a really good memory for clever things that other people say, and I will often write it down. I don't consider myself an innately clever one-liner kind of person, but I keep good company,” she said.
When asked if she set out to write a character that was representative of Millennial men, Greathead explained, “I always start off with an individual. I never think in broad terms, but as I continued writing, I realized many men can be very smart in many ways and still lack a kind of fundamental self-awareness.”
The intersection of George’s relative intelligence and his grandiosity fuels many of the funniest moments in the book. For instance, George feels he must write a book about two guys following Jack Kerouac’s journey from On the Road (because On the Road hasn’t received enough attention already).
Another source of inspiration for Greathead, albeit more subconscious, was her experience as the subject of the American version of the famous British documentary series Up. The popular docuseries follows a group of people every seven years of their lives, starting when they are children. While the American version did not run as long, Greathead was one of the subjects for its duration.
“Both of my books are not plot-driven. They are more of a profile of a person over time, and that could sort of be seen in that same kind of documentary, longitudinal lens,” she said. “I also feel like in fiction, there’s this expectation that the character evolves, overcomes and gets better, and I always find myself questioning the truth of that convention, which the Up series also explored."
The Book of George is also set mostly in Brooklyn, providing material for several zingers about hipster culture in the 2000s. In one of George’s blistering takes, he thinks to himself: “The people who gravitated to Williamsburg didn’t seem like real people but extras in a movie. The onus was on the aesthetic. Whatever look they were going for, whether it involved tattoos and trucker hats, or bow ties and handlebar mustaches, they were all in.”
For more of George’s droll observations on Brooklyn, The Book of George is available at Books Are Magic and everywhere books are sold.
