Breakaway Books

Authored by Kate Greathead; Published October 2024; Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️

I am protective of my generation. I know the stereotype of millennials is that we live for far too long in the good graces of our parents because we spent too much on avocado toast to buy a house. But, The Book of George shows the depressing reality of how this can actually come to be.

The Book of George follows the eponymous George from his youth through his 30s as he gets an education, tries to establish a career, and romances a young woman, Jenny. What stuck out to me, over and over, was George’s passivity, that he kept simply taking what was handed to him regardless of whether it was what he wanted. I felt Jenny’s frustration keenly as she repeatedly rails against George’s laziness. 

George, for his part, is medicated for depression for the majority of the book, apparently without exploring the cause with a therapist, counselor, or any other adult. He seems to be fully impervious to the encouragement of the women around him—Jenny, his mother, his sister. His depression is punctuated with occasional appearances of a sharp temper, showing the very worst side of him. I wish this didn’t feel quite so true to life (and it is certainly not true of all millennial men) but, as a millennial woman, it made it low-key upsetting to read. His casual selfishness punctured my optimism about our generation, regardless of gender, and yet, I cannot say that it was a universally unfair characterization. 

George does not have a bad heart, but he also seems to lack the discipline to turn his good heart into good character. Throughout the novel, there are shining rays of his earnestness, and yet somehow, his cluelessness always seems to get in the way of these efforts coming to fruition. In the end, I was not precisely fond of him, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel a strong animosity toward him either.

So, The Book of George may be just a tad too realistic if you’d rather not ruminate on future generations. But if you’re looking to get insight into how some millennials have turned out the way they are, this is not a bad start.