TITLE 13

by Michael A. Ferro

Overview

A timely investigation into the heart of a despotic government, TITLE 13 is a darkly comic cautionary tale of mental illness and unconventional love. The novel deftly blends satirical comedy aimed at the hot-button issues of modern society with the gut-wrenching reality of an intensely personal descent into addiction.

Young Heald Brown might be responsible for the loss of highly classified TITLE 13 government documents—and may have hopelessly lost himself as well. Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots.

Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with concerned family and his dying grandmother while juggling a budding office romance at the US government’s Chicago Regional Census Center.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941861462
Publisher:	Harvard Square Editions
Publication date:	02/01/2018
Pages:	398
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.89(d)

Editorial Reviews

“Ferro has given us an insightful, tightly-crafted, and wickedly cutting novel that forces us all to think about the things we don’t want to think about. But it’s just such a funny story, too. The only times I stopped laughing were to panic and cry a little.”

—Brian Boone, Splitsider

“TITLE 13 proves that even when society fractures, meaning can be drawn from the chaos. Michael A. Ferro writes with heart, tenderness, and wit. An impressive debut!”

—Davy Rothbart, creator of Found Magazine and author of My Heart Is an Idiot

From the Publisher

2017-10-20
An alcoholic confronts a work crisis and the sting of loneliness in this debut novel.Heald Brown works at the Chicago Regional Census Center in a secretive division called the Census Coverage Measurement, devoted to meticulously gathering and zealously protecting data about the city's population. One day, he comes into work to learn that 37 pages of the most sensitive, classified information—specifically protected by a regulation called Title 13—has mysteriously gone missing. Deputy Director Elina Flohard declares a state of emergency, intemperately warning that such a security breach could presage the very dissolution of society, and author Ferro humorously captures her hyperbolic alarmism. Soon after, Heald's immediate boss, manager Gilbert Tabin, inexplicably disappears after a meeting with Flohard, leading some to believe he was shoved down a laundry chute. Meanwhile, Heald grapples with a claustrophobic, solitary existence, which he somewhat numbs with out-of-control alcohol consumption. He also falls madly in love with co-worker Janice Torres, but both his addiction and his inclination toward privacy frustrate hopes of romantic success. Then his grandmother is badly injured in a car accident and subsequently diagnosed with cancer, compelling him to re-examine his life of unfulfilled promise and solipsistic desperation. Ferro's work is an eclectic mélange of parts—some farcically absurd and others more sober. For example, in one poignant moment, poetically expressed, Heald, while comforting his dying grandmother, wonders about the possibility of an afterlife: "Once she was gone, that would be it, and there would be no report from the other side—no telegraph or wire call from an ocean liner on the other side of world to let the others back at port know it had safely made passage." However, the plot's pace is enormously slow, and it often gets sidetracked by narrative detours that unnecessarily add to the book's page count. Also, the author's pastiche of styles, while impressive, can be disorienting as it juxtaposes the manically satirical with the quotidian. Still, there are flashes of comic inspiration, and Heald is a deftly drawn protagonist.Affecting and inventively funny despite its cumbersome length.

Kirkus Reviews