“A very different literary thriller, one in which the mystery is not who killed the victim, but how those who kill might live with what they’ve done... Some Hell becomes a canny and terrifying moral fable about our new and old American ways of both being together and missing each other.”
February 13, 2018 - Graywolf Press
An "evil-soaked novel" + New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
Colin’s family is dissolving in the aftermath of his father’s suicide. While his mother, Diane, retreats into therapy and cynicism, Colin clings to every shred of normal life. Shunned by his siblings and rejected by his homophobic best friend, Colin immerses himself in the notebooks his father left behind. Full of strange facts, lists, and historical anecdotes that neither Colin nor Diane can understand, the notebooks infect their worldview until they can no longer tell what’s real and what’s imagined. A novel of aching intensity, Some Hell shows how unspeakable tragedy shapes a life, and how imagination saves us from ourselves.
A wrenching and layered debut novel about a gay teen’s coming-of-age in the aftermath of his father’s suicide.
"[Nathan] does a masterful job of creating believable, multidimensional characters about whom the reader cares desperately... Nathan’s first novel is beautifully done and promises to linger in the reader’s memory." - Booklist (starred review)
"Nathan has crafted an all-consuming novel in which topics like suicide, homosexuality, parenting, friendship, and psychology make up a precarious tableau in which readers can leave their own subjectivity behind... A magnetic first novel combining wit, sex, and apocalyptic reverie." - Kirkus Books (starred review)
“With a burning clarity and calm intelligence that evoke another great Midwestern fatalist, William Maxwell, Patrick Nathan offers a shocking tale of loss and not quite renewal. Haunted by suicide, haunted by sex—those twin phantoms that stalk us all—Some Hell is startlingly propulsive, utterly enveloping, and a genuine revelation.”
“There’s nothing metaphysical about the hell Patrick Nathan takes us to in this brave and harrowing novel. It’s the hell we make for one another, out of silence and grief and desire, a hell whose necessary precondition is love.”
“Though it doesn’t trumpet its hybridity, Some Hell is a dark but tender work of domestic realism that makes room for antinovel collage, a high-stakes page-turner that doubles as an extended essay on Eros and Thanatos. Patrick Nathan writes with serious magnanimity equal to anxious times.”
“This gorgeous, shape-shifting novel dares to address the burden of becoming. Nathan is a true talent, evoking the intensity of adolescence and the gut-punch we feel when reality comes bearing down on us. An important work for these turbulent times.”
“Some Hell is an enthralling family saga that layers the slapstick giddiness of adolescence and sexual questing with a seething darkness. This is exactly the recipe for growing up with trauma.”