The Line Break <\/em>on Apple<\/a> | Spotty<\/a> | SoundCloud<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lazy & Entitled Podcast<\/em> on Apple<\/a> | Spotty<\/a> | SoundCloud<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A book that had me marveling at the endurance it must have taken to write it. A book that felt precisely sculpted. It\u2019s not genre, though\u2014Southern Gothic, sure, but it\u2019s not like we\u2019re hitting certain plot beats at certain times. It\u2019s a book that is at least partially based on a true story, which had me thinking \u201cthis novel would also make one hell of an episode of The Dollop<\/em>.\u201d I\u2019m talking, of course, about The Walls Are Closing In On Us<\/em> by Joshua Trent Brown. Content warning for just about everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Walls Are Closing In On Us<\/em> by Joshua Trent Brown: <\/strong>our story begins with our hero in the process of dying. Never a sign of a cheery time. George is a half-white, half-Choctaw man whom four white men have just beaten, stabbed, and attempted to hang. He\u2019s also been bitten by a snake. George is not long for this world, and his life flashes before our pages. He grows up on a reservation in Mississippi, never knowing his father. His mother is killed for ignoring a white man\u2019s advances. He goes to live with two friends, one of whom lost a foot after a snakebite. Eventually, one of the brothers gets a job with a well-meaning white boy who buys tickets to the state fair for his Indigenous friends. All they have to do is wear whiteface. By the end of the night, George has been sexually assaulted, found out his father is a white supremacist candidate for Governor, had his life threatened, killed a man in self-defense, and run away to join the circus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Life is sort of like that\u2014you have a bunch of well-remembered, era-defining traumas, and those can be nearly impossible to move on from. The in between times offer warmth, love, and food, though. Yes, it is evident that George is a half-Choctaw man living in one of the most racist periods of USian history (early 20th century). Yes, the walls are closing in on him and anyone like him. But is George\u2019s whole personhood defined by the one man he killed in self-defense? Is George\u2019s whole life only the worst things that happen to him? You can say George never had a chance, and that\u2019s true if you ignore the close friendships he forms and the loving family he gets to have. The walls close in on that, too. It\u2019s not like George gets a happy ending\u2014we\u2019re told on page one that he\u2019s dying. But this novel is more than one long fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a truly impressive book. Carefully written, language full and dripping like Spanish moss on a humid August evening. The landscape is infused with the ghosts of everyone who\u2019s lived there before. And it\u2019s filtered through the (third person limited) thoughts of this guy who sees the world a little more matter-of-factly than you or I might. He\u2019s caught off guard when people act hatefully, and surprised at the depths of people\u2019s hatred. Can\u2019t you relate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Sometimes, I go to the “Similar Artists” section of Apple Music, below a band I like. I don’t do it often enough. As I’m typing, “Fiesta Brava” by Astros de Mendoza & Los Mirlos came on, and oh my god. Whole set’s available, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-16.png\")