Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

"Oh, everything. I mean, the language is just spectacular. It’s clever, it’s beautiful, it makes you look at things through her eyes and hear her voice. You have to read it slowly and attentively because the poetry of the writing demands you pay attention to each phrase. A complete delight. And it’s profoundly, properly shocking in all the right ways—there’s very, very dark humour here. It’s a study of contemporary America and a revelation of all sorts of issues of identity and prejudice and what it means to struggle. I just loved it. Principally, it’s the voice. It’s very powerful. It’s a totally realised bit of writing, sensational. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I don’t want to tell the story, because that’s part of the delight, the way he tells it. But it is one of those books where whoever you are, whatever your reading experience, this will feel dynamic and thrilling in many ways. The closest comparator I can think of is Percival Everett’s The Trees , which won last year. That had some of the same, socially vital, musculature about it. But I don’t want to reduce it to its subject matter, because it’s a really enjoyable read. Every page gives you a fresh turn of phrase, a fresh idea or a fresh line that makes you question language, or all your assumptions, your place—whatever your place might be. So it’s a really extraordinary book. Will everyone find it as funny as the jury did? I hope so. It’s dynamic, it has a real energy and it is whipcrack funny in the places where you are most shocked. So, yes, I love it."

"When we first meet Carlotta, she’s freshly released from federal prison, or as she calls it, an “incorrectual facility” where there were “never no guards to guard the guards.” Terrible timing put her behind bars for decades, and her bad luck gives no quarter. Wearing homemade makeup and prison khakis, Carlotta swirls back to Brooklyn into a family largely indifferent to her gender transition and through a gentrified New York that leaves her – and the reader – breathless with nostalgia. Riotous and resilient, she is a supercharged survivor. Author James Hannaham’s picaresque novel, written with hedonistic verve, does Carlotta justice."

"Her voice! I hear so many voices across so many generations and geographies within Carlotta's singular voice … I am so grateful for this book."