My First Book

Gabi's Review

Honor Levy's debut short story collection, My First Book, is a highly imaginative depiction of her world from the Gen Z perspective. The book uses an innovative format in which online memes are assembled in free-form, rapid-fire speech reminiscent of Beat poetry. It’s been described as capturing the cultural moment of a generation of digital natives who are highly educated, highly medicated and constantly panicked by an uncertain future.

The first story in the collection, ‘Love Story,’ reads like a text message comprised solely of emojis! Readers unfamiliar with online culture may find themselves googling at a rate that detracts from the poetic effect achieved by this barrage of signifying references. But I would urge them to persist with the stories that follow, as there is much to admire in the craft and in the often profound insights that they offer.

Echoes of the Beat poets are also evident in Levy’s freeform hilarious exploration of the plasticity and transformation of words, as well as in the search for sexual liberation and identity, and in drug-induced, altered states of consciousness. The Zoomers in the collection find little hope in the choices the world presents, resigning themselves to a state of mind best described as cheerful nihilism. Levy makes good use of the irony of choice where there is none.

The story 'Z Was For Zoomer' is a A - Z exploration of terms and definitions in which the word Nerf stands for N (an acronym for "non-expanding recreational foam”), showing how it transitioned from a physical toy into a video game term into Gen Z parlance, effectively replacing foam bullets with digital ones. The game becomes a synecdoche as Levy muses on the conundrum of the larger game of life; " I don't know how to restore balance to a game that has always been unfair. We are all implicated. To exist is to be a soldier in this war. Birth is conscription".

What emerges is a reading experience akin to the comic absurdity of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and the haunting phrasing of William Burroughs’ Cities of the Red Night. My First Book can be read as a desperate plea for reason and meaning in a world where truth is found not in enduring moral convictions but in information-reach and repetition. And to my complete surprise, I also found the book deeply moving.

An exhilarating collection for Gen Z readers and beyond.

Publishers Reviews

"I am not asking you to agree with me. In fact, I'd be happier if you didn't. I am afraid of self-censorship in a place of supposed radicalism like a liberal arts school because I am afraid that one day we will all be too afraid of being wrong."

We grew up on the internet, or the Internet, as it was originally known - a proper noun, a place to visit and explore, before we claimed it as everybody's, turning it into a place where we pay bills, shop, fall in love, where kids get past parental controls to come of age. Honor Levy lends her experience to the narrators of these propulsive, provocative and pill-fuelled dispatches, speaking to the malleable reality we all inhabit, where clicks, codes, unreliable words and memes shape identities, personas and reputations.

In My First Book, Honor Levy endeavors to contextualize Gen-Z, a generation of young people desperate to discern what matters in a world that paints every event as a catastrophe. Irony is the salve of choice, and Levy deploys it masterfully. She paints the chasm in understanding between her parents' generation and the Zoomer reality overloaded with niche signs and meanings.