This book had a great first act, a good second act, and a little bit of a slow third act. The Index of Self-Destructive Acts became a tale of who the reader hates the most as the story progresses between characters. I’m not sure what it says about me as a person that by the end, the only character I could muster any sympathy for was the old white man who’d been cancelled for saying something deemed racist on ESPN. (Not that that was the cause of my sympathy, but at least he had dementia. The rest of the characters were making their terrible decisions in full possession of their faculties.)
One key takeaway from this book was a NEW, obscure baseball stat. Baseball loves a good obscure fact, and the index of self-destructive acts was a new one to me that I will certainly be tallying in the future with a freshly sharpened pencil. (Just kidding, I am not that guy.)
The setting was pleasant in that it was set in the historical time period of the Obama administration. Weirdly, it felt like it was “set” there, too, not just that the author had written a book before 2017. I mean, it was released in 2020 so maybe he did, but that’s not what it felt like. It felt like historical fiction set in the history of a decade ago.
I should have guessed from the title that this book would be about a lot of people unwinding their lives into tangled messes. (It was like watching all the disaster Poldark ensemble but without Demelza to cheer on—and frankly, she is the show.) There is no hero in The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, and there’s no anti-hero. There’s just a lot of people facing tough times and temptations and stress and making selfish or foolish or naïve (or illegal) decisions while you watch and turn the page to see what fresh horrors await.
Ok, I’m being a little dramatic, but they do a lot of stupid (extremely believable) things.
One note: I thought the author did a good job of portraying what I would assume is a lot of people’s experience with an extra-marital affair: a huge letdown. It wrecks your life, and the only thing that really captured your attention in the first place was the sneakiness. There’s zero payoff, just cost.
Since there was no one to cheer for in this story, I felt like the end dragged. I wasn’t waiting for revenge or vindication or certainly for any love to be requited. It was a slow burn of just waiting for the author to stop telling the story. Very little climax or conclusion. There were just no more words at the end. And then it was over.
