Drop

I heard about Mat Johnson through the Dos Passos Prize, which he won and which is named for one of my favorite writers. This novel, Drop, would have found favor, I think, with that earlier author, whose Manhattan Transfer was described by a contemporary as an "explosion in a sewer." In Drop there is an almost literal explosion in a toilet. The sights and sounds of rough Philadelphia, its crazy and desperate people, come alive in Johnson's deft similes and piquant descriptions that sometimes veer into verse. The narrator, young but not so young, finds his talent in advertising and strikes out for London. His adventures and misadventures result in the first truly surprising ending I've read in a novel in recent memory.