Bobcat Wins Believer Book Award

Bobcat [and Kindle] has won the 9th annual book award from the earnest, anti-snark literary magazine Believer. Readers may remember the tense title story about a Manhattan dinner party with a young descendant of the Donner party. Ben Fountain says the book i's "nothing short of brilliant...with the unflinching, cumulatively devastating precision of Chekhov and Munro." Previous Believer Award winners are Sam Lipsyte, Ben Lerner, Tom McCarthy, and Cormac McCarthy.

Believer's readers' survey confirmed 1) the ongoing popularity of indie fixtures George Saunders, Rachel Kushner, David Rakoff, Adelle Waldman, and Tao Lin, and 2) how many hip pervs must read that mag, because another title in the top ten is the funny and disturbing novel Tampa [and Kindle] about a brazen 26 year-old teacher who takes a job at a middle school in order to have sex with 14 year-old boys. The horny narrator is unabashed, unrepentant, and explicit. The book got great reviews from surprised critics. Rather than the obvious Lolita, shouldn't your book club compare and contrast it to Alan Hollinghurst's The Folding Star or Matthew Stadler's Allan Stein or Paul Russell's The Coming Storm?