The Award by Matthew Pearl: REVIEW

Goodreads Blurb

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above Silas Hale, a famous author who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster.

Silas refuses to allow his new neighbor to even make eye contact with him—until David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested, if intensely spiteful. But soon the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news that forces him into a desperate set of choices. Then fate intervenes with shocking consequences.

My Review

Okay. I’ll be honest with you guys: I’ve been struggling for days to write a review for this book. I wanted to really do it justice, you know? I LOVED this book. First 5-star read of the year, and I can already tell it’ll be hard to shake it from my 2026 Top 10. I NEED other readers to read and love this book, too.

The thing is, I’ve been having a Month. Actually, I’ve been having a Year, but most of it was last year, so… you get what I’m saying. Life has been life-ing. My writerly braincells aren’t firing on all cylinders, so to speak. Plus, it’s really hard to talk about this book without spoiling all the surprises that had my jaw falling off its hinges and loud guffaws bursting uncontrollably from my gaping mouth. Being unspoiled for this book is FUN. I don’t want to rob anyone else of that experience.

But today I thought, whatever, I should just write how I feel about it. And how I feel about it is I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH.

Okay, I’ll try for some non-spoilery coherence

Let me just say… I would rank The Award along with Bunny by Mona Awad for books that have something deep to say about the writing process and the author community, but that choose to say it in a darkly comic way that’s entertaining in its own right. At the same time, they’re both the type of book that a lot of people will walk away from wondering what the heck they just read. I’ve seen a lot of reviews that mention an unlikeable main character (yes, definitely) and a ridiculous plot (only if you take satire seriously). To these people I would say: Yes, and?

So please consider this vague review as a warning: if you don’t like satire about unlikeable characters, don’t read this book. (But please do read this book! It’s really really good!)

One more semi-spoilery thought before I go

I do have one semi-spoilery thing to say, so please stop reading here if you want to go into this book as blindly as I did. If you’ve already read the book, or if you feel you can handle a semi-spoilery thought, here it is…

The book David writes is described at one point as like a murder mystery without a murder or a mystery. When I first read that line, I laughed and thought, “Haha, what a meaningless, nonsensical description! This guy is so full of himself!” Little did I know, I was reading a book that does fit that description. 🤣 Genius!

You can buy The Award here on Bookshop.org*, or look for it wherever you buy books.
*As an affiliate, I’ll receive a small commission from any purchase made through this link, at no extra expense to you.