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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Sumell injects plenty of black humour, making for a bleakly enjoyable read

Shortlist

Violent, comic, and genuine, this book mixes truly relatable experience with the outlandish imaginings of a volatile character at odds with the rest of the world, and will make you cringe, hold your breath, and laugh. Put simply, Making Nice is a lovely book. You should read it

We Love This Book

Sumell’s shrapnel-sharp sense of humor is never more than a sentence away. By the time you’re finished, you’ll want more of Alby, which is good, because his creator’s just getting started

GQ

For fans of BJ Novak or Sam Lipsyte, Sumell’s self-destructive novel will appeal

Sara Keating, Sunday Business Post

Mr. Sumell’s savage humor is thrilling

New York Times

Making Nice is a confident debut with a strong and youthful voice that refuses to accept life’s injustices

Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times

Making Nice has an anarchic humour and a goofy, ingenious humanity that makes every page feel new

Guardian

Gloriously funny

Literary Review

One of the funniest (and best) books of the year

Publishers Weekly

Alby’s voice is perfect... A truly original portrayal of grief

Bookmunch

Making Nice is a little bit special. A truly original portrayal of grief

Benjamin Judge, Book Munch

You find yourself laughing aloud and wincing, if not outright groaning at the same time... Magnificent

Irish Examiner

Making Nice has an anarchic humour and a goofy, ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new… Some jokes…aren’t just funny, they are insightful, unexpected and hilarious. In its rampage to nowhere, Making Nice achieves the remarkable feat of making it feel better to travel hopelessly than to arrive.

Sandra Newman, Guardian