'Got under my skin in the way the best writing can' SHEILA HETI

A fearless and savagely funny examination of masculinity under late capitalism, from an electrifying new voice

Set in Philly one year into Trump's presidency, Sean Thor Conroe's audacious, freewheeling debut follows our eponymous fuccboi, Sean, as he attempts to live meaningfully in a world that doesn't seem to need him. Reconciling past, failed selves -- cross-country walker, SoundCloud rapper, weed farmer -- he now finds himself back in his college city, trying to write, doing stimulant-fueled bike deliveries to eat. Unable to accept that his ex has dropped him, yet still engaged in all the same fuckery -- being coy and spineless, dodging decisions, maintaining a rotation of baes -- that led to her leaving in the first place. But now Sean has begun to wonder, how sustainable is this mode? How much fuckery is too much fuckery?

Written in a riotous, utterly original idiom, and slyly undercutting both the hypocrisy of our era and that of Sean himself, Fuccboi is an unvarnished, playful, and searching examination of what it means to be a man.

'Terse and intense and new and sort of fucked up but knowingly so. I loved it' TOMMY ORANGE, author of THERE THERE

'Sean Conroe isn't one of the writers there's a hundred of . . . He writes what's his own, his own way' NICO WALKER, author of CHERRY

'Like Knausgaard, Conroe has a knack for making the mundane enthralling' CHRIS POWER, author of A LONELY MAN

'How brilliant to finally have a novel that examines contemporary masculinity with such candour, with such humour and style as to immediately read like amodern classic' BARRY PIERCE, IRISH TIMES

About the Author
SEAN THOR CONROE was born KAMURA SHO in Tokyo in 1991. He was raised in Scotland, Upstate New York and Northern California. In 2014, he walked from Philly to Colorado. He studied Writing and Reading and Philosophy at Swarthmore College. He started attending the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2019. His writing has appeared in New York Tyrant, The Nervous Breakdown, Hobart, Vol 1 Brooklyn, Expat, Soft Cartel, Gay Death Trance, HTML Giant, Back Patio, and X-R-A-Y. He hosts the book podcast 1storypod and lives in Harlem.

Reviews
Terse and intense and new and sort of fucked up but knowingly so. I loved it -- Tommy Orange, author of THERE THERE
A book to argue and laugh with; be appalled and impressed by. Fuccboi wrestles with big questions about masculinity and modernity, but best of all are its intimate and domestic moments: like Knausgaard, Conroe has a knack for making the mundane enthralling -- Chris Power, author of A LONELY MAN
Dare I be so despotic as to proclaim Fuccboi a necessary novel? You bet I do. How brilliant to finally have a novel that examines contemporary masculinity with such candour, with such humour and style as to immediately read like a modern classic. Sean Thor Conroe is a real one -- Barry Pierce * Irish Times *
A blistering debut * i-D magazine *
A debut coming-of-age (but probably not in the traditional sense!) novel about hypocrisy and self-awareness * Nylon *
Conroe's writing percolates with savage humour and wry observations on human complexity . . . Conroe works with a really rare audacity and slyness -- Anna Cafolla * AnOther Magazine *
Admirably fresh . . . [Conroe is] thoughtful, insecure and questing. And he has a distinctive, compelling voice that strikes me as utterly of its moment, of this moment . . . A genuine attempt to speak to some of those who don't normally give a shit about books, or at least, those who don't read The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books -- while also being worth the attention of those who do. -- Jay McInerney, author of BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY * Wall Street Journal *
Fuccboi's main claim to newness lies in the narrator's middle-way attitude to the ball-aching social justice religion that clogs the air of American cultural life . . . The internalized contradictions of his dementing culture manifest in amusing ways . . . I enjoyed being led through the vagaries of Sean's 'sus hetero bro' existence and appreciated his attempt to do what in 2020s America is tricky verging on taboo: to write like a man, not an ideal. -- Rob Doyle, author of THRESHOLD * Observer *
Modern mores and a certain type of twentysomething male energy clash colourfully in the vibrant voice of this debut novel * Observer *
One of literature's most exciting new voices . . . explosive. Fuccboi has crawled up people's backsides in a way only the best fiction does, especially when it holds a mirror up to the cultural zeitgeist. -- Jade Wickes * The Face *
Fresh prose, colloquial and poetic * Vanity Fair *
Conroe confronts the anxieties at the Fuccboi's core, with verve, humour and empathy. It's essentially a bildungsroman for a generation of disaffected men * Hunger *
The novel is about something more interesting than sex. It's an account of a highly specific crack-up, and a largely self-inflicted one, though a few of the usual suspects, among them capitalism and the American healthcare system, share some of the blame. -- Christian Lorentzen * London Review of Books *
The infectious vigour of Conroe's show-stealing voice means Fuccboi lands like a grenade in the ecosystem of better-mannered literary fiction -- Anthony Cummins * Metro *
Je suis Fuccboi . . . So much of the novel's success lay in its ability to invoke a feeling of often disquieting recognition . . . [Conroe] creates a bridge, a conversation, and I see my own feelings reflected in his, despite the differences in how our respective feelings have emerged. If a gender divide indeed exists, finally it feels surmountable. -- Huda Awan * Review 31 *
[Conroe's protagonist's] crisis of masculinity is also modern America's crisis of masculinity. If men are still choking on the toxicity of historical conventions of gender, then literature should be a welcoming space for exploring, questioning and airing the "savage, ugly, testosterone-fuelled, shameful" things that we would all rather repress - regardless of gender -- Katie Goh * The Skinny *
Mesmerizing . . . Our narrator's slangy bravado may be a little cringey and his hypermasculinity just a bit sus, but he is also endlessly charming, particularly in his willingness to mock his own swaggering persona -- Alec Gewirtz * LA Review of Books *
It's hard to give a sense of how funny, clever and infectious Conroe's writing can be: how supple an instrument this voice is, how rhythmically and cumulatively rewarding when it feeds off its own energy. For internal riffs we could be in the absurd, side-shuffling mind of one of George Saunders's characters. -- Jonathan McAloon * Financial Times *
In an age of quick intolerance and polarised positions, Fuccboi delivers a nuanced account of the darker, more desperate attitudes of the young hetero-male today; those flagrant tendencies not excusable, but which might be understood as rooted in, say, insecurity and poverty (of the financial-social-educational-emotional kinds) -- Fi Churchman * Art Review *
Got under my skin in the way the best writing can -- Sheila Heti, author of MOTHERHOOD
Sean Conroe isn't one of the writers there's a hundred of. We won't tell somebody 'Sean Conroe' when we meant to say the name of another writer we got confused with Sean Conroe. He writes what's his own, his own way -- Nico Walker, author of CHERRY
Blazes a sonic trail through the tangles of experience. A contemporary kunstleroman - a coming of age of an artist. So much about the struggle to find a nourishing and communally beneficial but still honest and not self-suppressing way to be a man -- Sam Lipsyte, author of HARK
A completely unique voice . . . sounds like no one I know -- Scott McClanahan, author of THE SARAH BOOK



Book Information
ISBN 9781472293145
Author Sean Thor Conroe
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Wildfire
Publisher Headline Publishing Group
Weight(grams) 247g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 26mm