The Hypocrite

A Novel

By: Jo Hamya

Narrated by: Claire Kinson

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • DAKOTA JOHNSON’S TEATIME PICTURES SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK ● From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a novel set between the London stage and Sicily, about a daughter who turns her novelist father’s fall from grace into a play, and a father who increasingly fears his precocious daughter’s voice.

“A sharp book, beautifully written.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind and Entitlement

"Excellent...I enjoyed the novel hugely...Like Edward St Aubyn and Anne Enright, Hamya is so good on generational conflict, the friction of family, and the damage done by charming but complacent men. But The Hypocrite is a strikingly original book too. I tore through it, shoulders clenched but full of admiration."
—David Nicholls, author of One Day, in Electric Literature

August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia’s play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them. When the house lights dim however, he understands that his daughter has laid him bare, has used the events of their summer to create an incisive, witty, skewering critique of the attitudes and sexual mores of the men of his generation.

Set through one staging of the play, The Hypocrite seamlessly and scorchingly shifts time and perspective, illuminating an argument between a father and his daughter that, with impeccable nuance, examines the fraught inheritances each generation is left to contend with and the struggle to nurture empathy in a world changing at lightning-speed.

The ending!

Grumpy old man here.

Yep. I found myself more sympathetic to the dad than the daughter, which made me resist the narrative swing.

But then... hmm. The ending. Maybe that's the point.

We have two upper middle class whiners. Then we have the ... final pages.

Hamya ... just maybe is making a larger point about the narcissistic, navel gazing that goes into the "me me ME!" art of today -- from both the old and young.

Unlikable characters

No plot to mention. Over and over the same conversations.
Life repeats errors and un likability of characters.

A big disappointment

Boring, poorly narrated story (though there’s not much plot) about unlikable characters- all of them.

Strange

I did not like the format of this book and decided not to finish it.

Consistently boring

While I tried repeatedly to like this book, by the time I got to the end and realized it was the end it was anticlimactic. There was really nothing going on. An egotistical, father, a fragile, equally egotistical, daughter, who cares? Don’t waste your time.