The book feels like an experiment Percival Everett needed to conduct before he found his footing in later works. Some passages sing; some read as creative writing exercises meant for no reader but himself. Sometimes the satire and self-awareness of Everett’s narrator yields powerful, funny insight about the struggles of being a Black artist in America; sometimes it just comes off as pretentious. When the book rests in the story of Monk’s family, taking grief and complex relationships with parents head on without doing cartwheels around meta-fiction, the book is at its best.