Before You Go

June 15, 2020
The story of a young man struggling with depression alternates with chapters about an unorthodox version of heaven in this warm debut novel. The main plotline begins with the 1980s childhood of Elliot Chance. His parents are somewhat distant, his older brother, Dean, a bit of a bully, but Elliot's imagination provides him with a troupe of friendly monsters. There's an air of whimsy about the monsters and about Elliot's discovery of a mysterious book, but that's brought up short when his attempt to physically enter into the book's fantasy world leads to an injury--and a doctor's diagnosis that the boy is suicidal. Elliot's wryly humorous first-person narration takes us through his high school and college years quickly and focuses on his 20s, when he's working as an accountant in Manhattan during the dot-com boom. Elliot meets two significant friends in his support group for potential suicides: Bannor, a dapper middle-aged man who insists he has visited the future; and Sasha, a woman about Elliot's age who writes advertising copy in which she hides subversive messages. Each of them will have an impact on Elliot's struggles. The story of his life is interlaced with chapters set in a sort of heaven, a beautiful otherworldly combination of design lab, resort, and training center. These chapters focus on Merriam and Jollis, a couple of its angelic employees. Humans, it seems, were not created by a single god figure but from blueprints by a committee known as "the brass," executed by Merriam. Her prototype is exquisite, Jollis says--but she goes rogue and installs a flaw, an empty space next to its heart. Every human has that unfillable space, with a wide variety of results. In chapters labeled "before," "after," and "in the future," one soul, presumably Elliot's, learns all about it. The heavenly chapters are fun and often insightful, like an intriguing vision of the future in which pharmaceutical companies invent pills that "cure" emotions like sadness and fear, with unintended results. Butler creates likable characters, and his prose is polished and inviting, although sometimes the book's warmly whimsical tone seems out of joint with the subjects of depression and suicide. Celestial fantasy and somber reality combine in the story of a suicidal young man.

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Starred review from June 22, 2020
Butler brilliantly imagines the creation of human life, and the toll its imperfection takes on Elliot, a Gen-X man from Connecticut, in this dazzling debut. Interludes headed “Before” describe a rather slipshod process of otherworldly creation, in which a being named Merriam places a tiny void in her design of the human body that leaves people with an unconscious, undefined longing, while her partner, Jollis, dumps bottles of emotions into the hole to try to fix it. In the central narrative, Elliot Chance, whom the reader meets at age nine in 1981, is, like everyone else, subject to his body’s major design flaw, but at this age, he doesn’t yet feel it. Butler describes Elliot and his older brother’s innocent years playing outside and confronting the power of nature in beautiful, heart-wrenching prose. Elliot has a few kindred spirits in high school and college, but drifts through a depression as a young adult in New York City until he’s invited to a suicide prevention group, where he connects with Sasha, who writes ad copy with encrypted messages demeaning the client’s product, and Bannor, who claims he has traveled to the future. Bannor tells Elliot about the forthcoming pharmaceutical interventions that will medicate all emotions. Meanwhile, Elliot battles depression until he finds the value of living in the moment. Butler’s treatise on the value of life with all its moments of darkness and light leaves the reader with aching gratitude for their existence. Agent: Doug Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic.