Dead in Long Beach, California

August 1, 2023

When Coral discovers her brother Jay dead by suicide in his shabby California apartment, she's sufficiently undone by grief to do something unwise; she grabs his phone and starts responding to his texts as if he were still alive. Then she must keep up the charade. A debut novel following two story collections, including Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, an NYPL Young Lions finalist. Prepub Alert.

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September 18, 2023
In Blackburn’s bold and formally inventive debut novel (after the collection How to Wrestle a Girl), a Black gay graphic novelist impersonates her dead brother. Coral has discovered her brother Jay’s body in his Long Beach, Calif., apartment, after his death by suicide. As her grief moves in its own particular way, she neglects to tell her niece Khadija or others the news, and replies to text messages meant for Jay in his voice. Blackburn’s entire novel is narrated by the mysterious chorus from Coral’s popular graphic novel Wildfire, and Blackburn alternates from chronicles of Coral’s day-to-day swiping on dating apps and concerns that Khadija will catch on to her deception to long sections from Wildfire’s AI-like chorus, which describes the detritus of humanity after an apocalypse. Also in the mix are Coral’s flashbacks to her teen years growing up in Compton in the 1990s, when she had a crush on Jay’s girlfriend, the future mom of Khadija, and later coming out to 14-year-old Khadija but not to Jay. While the excerpts from Wildfire can be dense and obscure, Blackburn is an excellent prose stylist. Coral’s sections are full of acerbic wit (an “exhausting” trip to Medieval Times for Khadija’s benefit is one of those “miserable situations” people enter into “with the belief that someone they loved would be happy there”). This ambitious effort is worth a look. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.

November 1, 2023

Coral lives in a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Young people have been handed problems that are impossible to fix in an unsustainable society, and resentment is their general attitude. Some opt out via suicide; others turn to superhero fiction for solace. Coral writes a superhero comic book series to answer the demand, but she is also part of the disillusioned and anxious generation, living at least partially in a fabricated mental world. Then she finds her brother Jay dead in his apartment only minutes after she spoke to him on the phone. While she deals with police, coroners, and burial, she decides to keep Jay alive in the virtual world. She responds to his phone messages as if he is alive; she creates a Facebook page and persona for him; she tells no one that he is dead, not even his daughter. After an excruciating week, she finally comes to grips with her loss. Blackburn sharply captures the longing of the younger generation for a better world, as the angst and disconnect projected via Coral is visceral. VERDICT Readers interested in the current state of the world and the consequences of living in it will find this book both difficult and fascinating.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

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Starred review from October 15, 2023
A graphic novelist grapples--or doesn't--with the suicide of her brother. When graphic novelist Coral Brown walks into her brother's studio apartment in Long Beach, California, she doesn't initially realize that Jay is dead by his own hand. After his body is whisked away by EMTs, she notices a text message on his cell phone from his college-age daughter, Khadija, wondering if she can postpone a planned dinner. The message seems to break Coral, who responds to her brother's death first with anger ("More dead shit. It never ends. For me. And sometimes it gets to be about me, okay. I am a person. I'm not some kind gay nun with a credit card. I have shit to do"), then with stunning denial--she decides to answer Jay's messages from Khadija and other people as if she were him, later setting up social media profiles for him, refusing to admit to herself that he's gone. She goes about her own life, brunching with friends, appearing at a comic convention, and meeting people on a dating app. She also gets sucked back into her younger days, recalling previous relationships, a custody battle Jay had with Khadija's mother, and the deaths of her parents. The debut novel from short story author Blackburn is narrated by a mysterious "we"--perhaps characters from Coral's book, perhaps multiple versions of herself, perhaps both. Despite the heavy subject matter, sensitively handled, this is frequently a deeply funny novel: Long Beach is "an oily, salty city nicknamed Weirdbeach by those not likely to fly a gay pride flag on their lawns anytime soon," and Khadija "loved amusement parks the way chefs love cardamom and pretentious knives." Blackburn shares a deep intellect and odd sensibility with authors like George Saunders and Rion Amilcar Scott, but this novel is its own thing: intelligent, bizarre, and brilliantly written. An astonishing debut novel from a remarkably creative writer.

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December 1, 2023
Blackburn's (How to Wrestle a Girl, 2021) first novel is an engaging and original portrait of a woman on the verge. Coral is a Black woman, famous enough to draw a crowd at Comic Con for her graphic novel, Wildfire. When she goes to visit her brother, Jay, she finds he has died by suicide. After calling the EMTs, she starts using Jay's phone to respond, as him, to text messages, mostly from his daughter Khadija. Over the next week, Coral creates a social media account for Jay, sets up a date with his newish girlfriend, and slowly unravels, although she continues going to work and meeting women over a dating app--enough to keep up the appearance of sanity. Interspersed are excerpts from the postapocalyptic Wildfire and flashbacks to Coral's childhood, many of them narrated by a collective that may be from the graphic novel or from Coral's own mind as she loses her grip on reality. Blackburn is formidable, her writing is experimental in intriguing and meaningful ways, and this is another winner.

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