Supermarket by Bobby Hall a.k.a. Logic

I am 100% into psychological thrillers that place someone with an underlying mental illness as the lead in books. Usually these protagonists are morbidly fascinating in their disturbances and hyper-focused perspectives on the world around them. The Donnie Darko/Fight Club rawness of becoming unhinged from reality is both horrifying and unbalancing, but there’s always a depth to the drama of these characters’ lives that leaves the reader or viewer mesmerized.

When I saw that Bobby Hall a.k.a Logic wrote a contemporary fictional book toeing the line of mental illness and big pharma abuse in Smalltown, USA, I could not wait to get a copy. As a rapper, Logic is endearingly poignant and insightful, creating art that reflects a reality we rarely hear about through music. I recently watched a documentary about Logic and his childhood growing up in Maryland. His upbringing was riddled with parental neglect and addiction, instability at home and school, and a lot of personal experience with mental illness. These insights aided him in the writing of Supermarket and creating an unstable world for his protagonist, Flynn.

I was intrigued by the premise of Supermarket; An aspiring young writer named Flynn, living in Oregon, strives to escape the monotony of his reality and spark inspiration for the next Great American Novel that will catapult him into infamy. Flynn resolves to find his inspiration by pursuing a job at the local grocery store. From there, he meets a roguish, chauvinist named Frank. Frank regularly steals from the market, brags about supposed conquests of all of the female employees, and has a quirkily insatiable appetite for bananas. Flynn immediately decides Frank is the perfect muse for his masterpiece and begins to write his story around Frank’s bizarre antics.

There’s a love interest thrown in as well, in the form of a shop girl named Mia whose into all of the same quirky hipster music Flynn digs, and they begin to develop a relationship from there. As this is happening, Frank convinces Flynn to hook him up with another cashier named Rachel, while Frank also lets Flynn in on his plot to rob the supermarket.

There are obvious hints from the get-go that life isn’t how Flynn views it, as the story is narrated from his first person perspective. There is a bizarre unreality to Flynn’s descriptions the reader will quickly pickup on. And though I thought the simplicity of Logic’s writing kind of added to the The Catcher in the Rye quality of the book, there were points where I stopped and thought, “My eighth grade students could have written this and included more detail!”

To sum up my feelings: Lawd, no.

The IDEA for this story is great. The quality of the writing? Not so much. If I read one more, “ummm, hahaha” or an endearing usage of the word “man”, I was going to rip this book in half. There were places in this story that had SO MUCH POTENTIAL, which is frustrating as a reader because you know the book could be so much more. The lack of descriptive language and fairly one-dimensional perspective was truly grueling.

Logic actually had the nerve to write in his acknowledgment that he had a spurt of marathon reading recently and felt that was enough to qualify him to write a good story. Read a few more books, sir. Take a few notes.

Luckily, this book was short and sweet rather than long winded and exhausting. If I had to wade through anymore of this half baked plot, Supermarket would be kindling for my new fire pit.

I did enjoy how the story was broken up into two parts. I won’t share the significance of this; just that by doing this, Logic added a layer to the story that earned Supermarket a little more favor in my book.

Not my favorite book of the year (it really did remind me unpleasantly of The Catcher in the Rye, which I chose to read for a book report in high school because it’s emo as hell, and absolutely LOATHED). For all it’s flaws, it was a strangely refreshing read to throw into my rotation of YA fantasy and cotemporary romances.

If you’re into potential cult classics (because let’s be real, 95% of those books are crap) and want something a little darker and you aren’t deterred by lackluster prose, I would give Supermarket a try. I give it a 1.5 out of 5 stars.

Happy & healthy reading!

Alexis