'Anthem' review: An epidemic of teen suicide haunts Noah Hawley's disturbing new novel

The world is in decline. Climate change, bigotry, loneliness and disaffection have taken over, and for the characters in Noah Hawley’s new novel "Anthem" (Grand Central Publishing, 448 pp., ★★½ out of four, out now), there is little hope of reversing the slide. How they respond varies – some stand up and fight, some submit to despair and give up.

A suicide epidemic has overtaken Hawley’s version of America, and it’s fueled by teenagers. First in small numbers, then in growing crowds, teens choose to kill themselves rather than commit to living in a hopeless world. “What if the answer was not to endure the transition and all its adjacent misery but to end it?” Those teens who survive are left scrambling for sources of meaning to motivate themselves to move forward.

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One such teen is Simon Oliver, a gentle and philosophical 15-year-old recovering from the shock of his sister’s suicide with the help of heavy medications and therapy sessions offered by the Float Anxiety Abatement Center. He breaks out, accompanied by fellow patients Louise, a determined young woman contending with the trauma of sexual captivity, and the Prophet, a messianic figure with an irksome tendency to editorialize about the state of American society to anyone who will listen.

As they make their way across the country, their stories thread with many others. One of the most intriguing is that of Margot Nadir, a politically moderate judge who’s surprised to be tapped for a Supreme Court post – though her path to nomination is complicated by a daughter gone missing and a husband who’s hiding a serious illness.

An accomplished TV creator ("Fargo," "Legion"), Hawley the fiction writer is at his best when pitching his taut setup and its well-drawn cast of characters. The mystery of the dying teenagers, and the Prophet’s quest to confront a mysterious cruel man named the Wizard, will solidly hook in readers. The book’s premise is aided by its vivid characterizations: no sooner has Hawley introduced a new personage than he’s giving a compelling accounting of their life, making them live and breathe on the page within just a few paragraphs, in ways reminiscent of Stephen King. Hawley’s experience in television shows in the memorable camera-ready imagery he evokes, from Simon’s sister intentionally overdosing on opioids and festooning her family’s marble bathroom with hundreds of empty foil packets from drug samples “staring in judgment” to a group of vigilantes in horrifying clown outfits.

After its promising opening sequences, though, "Anthem" loses its considerable magnetism and fails to regain it. The book’s focus frays and dissipates; chapters invest in new characters only to abandon them pages later, surge in new story directions before hitting a wall and limping back to an increasingly brittle main plot. These narrative moves feel less like daring experimentation and more like signs that the author has lost interest in his own novel and is looking for a new one.

In his closing pages, Hawley directly addresses his readers, confessing that his daughter wants to know how he’ll end his book and he has no idea what to tell her. In another situation, this might have felt like an acknowledgment that some societal ills are too entrenched for any one novel to face. Coming after "Anthem’s" scattered sprawl, though, it feels more like Hawley is exhausted by a story that’s gotten out of control, like he’s appealing for our mercy: I give up.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Anthem': Noah Hawley's disturbing new novel is a dark vision of U.S.