Praise for The Fact Checker:
"The Fact Checker is a workplace comedy, a trivia-rich love letter to New York, and, to top it all off, nicely written, which is more of a rare treat these days than it should be. I tore through its lean, witty, plot-heavy pages in just a few hours... The fact-checker himself...is less the subject of the story than its tour guide, and what he’s showing us isn’t really The New Yorker or even fact-checking, but New York City before the smartphone. Kelley’s decision to set The Fact Checker in 2004 is his single most impactful novelistic decision.... Perhaps what I most ached for while reading Kelley’s book wasn’t a simpler world than the one we live in now but a simpler feeling, which Kelley captures exactly: the simple feeling of liking to learn new things, and liking to meet new people who might teach you new things. The simple feeling that “known unknowns” are the right place to start but far from the end of the story."—Susan Choi, The Yale Review
"[The Fact Checker] is a sprightly hyperlocal caper that is also, intentionally or not, a Notes and Comment on the fragile state of urban intellectual masculinity." —Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times
"[The Fact Checker] raise[s] some of the most relevant questions du jour: What is a fact? What is truth? And who gets to decide?" —Ilana Masad, Los Angeles Times
“One thing is for sure: Kelley’s comedic hero is a chronic, self-sabotaging overthinker and, less amusingly, an overdrinker. “The Fact Checker” lands as a clever caper not just about sometimes elusive truths, but also about “the paralysis of encyclopedic doubt.” . . . By engaging with what the author calls “thickets of untruth,” this book could not be more timely.” —Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor
"Kelley’s novel is less in the lineage of McInerney and more in the tradition of another facts-obsessed writer from New York: Thomas Pynchon. . . Like Kelley’s novel, Pynchon’s book arrived during a tumultuous time in America, one where intense polarization had damaged the nation’s fundamental sense of the truth. . . . The Fact Checker [is] a book that is intensely aware of its time. Perhaps we need more subtle comedies like this to help us comprehend what has happened to the truth.” —Nick Ripatrazone, The Bulwark
"Wonderful . . . a romp . . . this is a novel with both soul and humor, and it will never make you yearn to be a fact-checker. Unless you want your heart broken."—Jim Kelly, Air Mail Editor's Picks
"In his sort-of-mystery debut, with understated humor and zippy prose, former New Yorker fact-checker Kelley is a fluid and funny writer, divertingly digressing on the nature of fact-checking and filling out a backstory for the narrating fact-checker, who, both well-informed and hilariously unaware, is as charmingly pedantic as a character could be."—Annie Bostrom, Booklist
"Kelley’s debut is poignant, funny, and full of the quirky characters that make life interesting."—Joanna M. Burkhardt, Library Journal
"A bravura debut."—Kirkus Reviews
"Kelley’s droll and pithy narration propels the story, as does the impressive plotting.... Readers will be swept up."—Publishers Weekly
“Austin Kelly has written a quirky, funny, smart novel about one of the weirder publishing jobs in New York. His protagonist seems to be a much better fact checker than I ever was, dogged and meticulous, though that doesn’t ultimately save him from his own human impulses.” —Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City
"What a joy it is to follow the Fact Checker on his journey to learn the truth (in the era that launched truthiness) about suspicious activity at an organic farmer’s market. Really, he’s looking for a girl, and what he finds is so much more and less and deliciously other than expected. “You never know, when you are picking and poking, what will ooze and leave a stain,” the Fact Checker tells us. It’s one reliable truth in this darkly funny urban epic that serves up earnest innocence and clear-eyed cynicism in equal measure, and captivates to the very end." —Laura Sims, author of Looker and How Can I Help You
"In an age of disinformation and deepfakes, here comes a slyly unassuming novel about the nature of truth and what really matters. The Fact Checker is a propulsive mystery about heirloom tomatoes, a missing woman, or slipshod journalism: take your pick. It’s also a moving portrait of what it’s like to be young and in love with the city, and the obsessions—and doubt—it can inspire." —Ben McGrath, author of Riverman: An American Odyssey
"The Fact Checker begins like it’s going to be a conventional mystery story before turning into something much wilder and more original that questions the nature of how we really know what’s true and what isn’t. It’s as if Martin Scorsese’s film Afterhours ran into Adaptation at a bar and convinced it to go for an adventure. I read The Fact Checker in a flash, enjoyed the hell out of it, and woke up still thinking about it the next day." —Peter Blauner, New York Times bestselling author of The Intruder and Picture in the Sand
03/01/2025
DEBUT The protagonist of Kelley's debut is the Fact Checker, who works for a magazine in New York City in 2004 and is obsessive about checking facts for every story he is given. He is assigned to a story about the New Egypt farm in Southern New Jersey, which supplies trendy Ramapo tomatoes to the farmer's market at Union Square in Manhattan. A comment in the story from a farm worker named Sylvia about nefarious activities at the farmer's market causes him to visit the market to interview her in person. They meet, but distractions keep the Fact Checker from clarifying her comment. Then Sylvia disappears. He spends weeks looking for both Sylvia and the nefarious activities at the market, to no avail. He eventually visits the farm where Sylvia worked, thinking she has been killed by the owner. His search gets increasingly bizarre, taking him to little known corners of the city, making him question what he actually knows, along with questioning motivations, the social morals of New York City, and his place in the world. Kelley is a former fact checker for the New Yorker, providing excellent insider knowledge for this novel. VERDICT Kelley's debut it poignant, funny, and full of the quirky characters that make life interesting.—Joanna M. Burkhardt
2025-01-18
An endearingly obsessive fact-checker stumbles around New York in search of truth, meaning, and a woman.
From theNew Yorker’s iconic headline font to what certainly seem to be the real processes of the magazine’s operation, Kelley’s mostly charming debut is steeped in the lore of his former employer. As it opens, the unnamed narrator has received an assignment to fact-check a story known as “Mandeville/Green”—the name of the article’s author plus a one-word “slug” to indicate the topic, in this case the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan: “That’s Greenmarket, one word, capitalized. It’s a trade name used by the Council on the Environment of New York City, a nonprofit that founded the city’s farmers markets in 1976. That’s the kind of thing I check first.” Kelley gets often hilarious mileage out of this type of minutiae; in one memorable scene, the entire office falls silent to listen to a very senior member of the department fact-check a piece on 50 Cent. “‘F-u-c-k-a?’ we heard him say. ‘Is that correct? Motherfucka?’ He pronounced the end ‘aah’ like a child is supposed to when the doctor is looking down his throat.” Our hero gets in over his head while trying to verify a reference to “nefarious practices” at the farmer’s market, during which he meets an intriguing tomato grower named Sylvia, who becomes an obscure object of desire in and of herself. Most of this novel is wonderful, but there are a few serious caveats. One, there’s an early giveaway of the outcome of one of the narrator’s central quests, which dilutes its interest for the reader. Two, there is a disgusting and totally uncalled-for scene of gore, sure to turn off readers of the vegetarian persuasion. Somehow, after that nightmarish interlude, nothing seems as funny, and the close is a bit of a fizzle.
This comic novel opens brilliantly but goes a mite awry by the end. Still, a bravura debut.
