Making Nice

To say that Matt Sumell is an original voice is an immense understatement. Making Nice is ferocious and merciful, comic and heartbreaking. It will turn you inside out - Ramona Ausubel

Sumell nails something about his generation which is feat enough, but beneath the funniness and swagger and freshness and raw energy is a sincerity that is rare and true - Aimee Bender

Sumell manages to achieve a wondrous balance: pathos, humor, and serious angst rolled up in narration by a delightfully self-deprecating underdog... assured, inventive, and raucous storytelling - The Rumpus

Indelible writing... Meet Alby, an Everybro for the millennial set - Entertainment Weekly

From the first page, Sumell’s exceptional novel in stories unleashes one of the most comically arresting voices this side of Sam Lipsyte’s Homeland... Sumell’s debut demonstrates an almost painful compassion for the sinner in most of us, making Making Nice even more fun than eavesdropping in a confession booth - Publishers Weekly

Sumell’s compulsively readable novel in stories introduces a restless underachiever as irresistible as he is detestable, surely one of the most morally, violently, socially complex personalities in recent literature…. Sumell’s debut is humbly macho, provoking outrage, pity, and finally tenderness. Perhaps this is a book readers will hate to love, but only because it feels, like Alby, all too real - Booklist

There's a special alchemy here that you are going to want to witness...offhand and funny, and then the tender heart emerges from the shadows, so tender, and comes at us with a knife. Every story here is two: one the fun, the other the blade - Ron Carlson

Focusing on the single reality that human beings die, Sumell wakes up, and boy oh boy is he ever pissed off... Sumell, on Alby's behalf, fights back, and he fights dirty. Using cunning, reckless rage, and bravura comic timing, he kicks death's ass... Bystanders get hurt, the reader got hurt, but at least I was reminded that I was part of this whole shitty deal. You'd like to believe that there are consolations, and there are. Being sentient, for example. Being able to read, for instance. Having read Making Nice - Geoffrey Wolff

The self-destructive narrator lashes out with reckless intimacy, random violence, and an often hilarious misplaced rage that shoots to wound rather than kill. What saves its victims and the reader is a naked rendering of a heart sorting through its broken pieces to survive. The result is an eloquent empathy, an uplift of hope-filled grace - Mark Richard

Making Nice will grab you by the throat, raise your blood pressure, and cause you to chortle in a crowd. It will also break your heart. When they're writing the history of the best characters of our time, Alby will be there, telling the others to get in line - Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves

The arrival of a brilliant, infectious new voice for our age: Alby is surprisingly tender yet angrily fighting his way off the page. This is ferocious, fearless, extremely pitched fiction, skittering between humour and cruelty, horror and heartwreck

A young US writer to watch. Matt’s work has already garnered much praise in the US and has featured in Paris Review and Esquire

A refreshing, hugely entertaining book to have fun with. Perfect for an online media campaign: playing on sibling rivalries, using the strength of Alby’s voice in audio recordings

Matt's twitter: @Matt Sumell

One of Holt’s lead fiction titles for 2015 in the US