“He's pretending to be a person, too. And he's good at it. Better than me.”

Reading a book about a professional critic as a non professional critic was revealing in ways I did not appreciate but I feel much less acerbic than this narrator, that’s for sure. I love a solid noir style narrative, a refutable narrator, and healthy portion of self-destruction. A lot of really interesting theater theory and discourse was sprinkled throughout the novel, something I wasn’t expecting but genuinely enjoyed.

“But I am too fine a critic to endure bad art. It's a gift I can't accept.”

The main plot was only just a hair past unbelievable to feel authentic. What “Black Swan”, which has surprisingly similar vibes to “Here in the Dark”, got right was the gross fracture of reality: the shapeshifting, hallucinations, etc. were all pointedly surreal. In “Dark” everything felt relatively flat enough that by the time the reveal rolled around, it didn’t feel worth the effort the MC put in.

3.5/5 Stranger things have happened in New York City.