Supermarket

By: Bobby Hall

Narrated by: Bobby Hall

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's Summary

The stunning debut novel from one of the most creative artists of our generation, Bobby Hall, aka Logic. Bobby Hall’s stellar narration is accompanied by music he performed specifically for this story.  

“Bobby Hall has crafted a mind-bending first novel, with prose that is just as fierce and moving as his lyrics. Supermarket is like Naked Lunch meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - if they met at Fight Club.” (Ernest Cline, number one New York Times best-selling author of Ready Player One) 

Flynn is stuck - depressed, recently dumped, and living at his mom’s house. The supermarket was supposed to change all that. An ordinary job and a steady check. Work isn’t work when it’s saving you from yourself. But things aren’t quite as they seem in these aisles. Arriving to work one day to a crime scene, Flynn’s world collapses as the secrets of his tortured mind are revealed. And Flynn doesn’t want to go looking for answers at the supermarket. Because something there seems to be looking for him. 

A darkly funny psychological thriller, Supermarket is a gripping exploration into madness and creativity. Who knew you could find sex, drugs, and murder all in aisle nine?  

©2019 Bobby Hall (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

I liked the Epilogue

I feel bad writing a negative review, because I think the author is probably a likable guy who has gone through some rough times , but this one was definitely not for me.
If he wasn't already famous with connections, I can't imagine this would have been published or recorded. I am also surprised by the many great reviews, but maybe they were also from fans of " Logic ". I only know I didn't enjoy this book, and I was glad when it ended.

Sophomoric, derivative, and predicatable

To paraphrase David Spade, I liked "Supermarket" better when it was called "Fight Club". I came across this book when searching for heart pounding thrillers I could listen to on the plane. This is not a heart pounding thriller. If I wanted to be charitable, I would call it a slow burn. But my bigger issue was that it just seemed derivative of mental disorder books like Fight Club, Shutter Island, The Shining. etc. As a result, the "twists" are very predictable. Also, other than the adult language, it read more like a teen novel to me, And finally, the self-indulgent mental health PSA at the end was eye-roll inducing.

Supermarket

I grabbed Supermarket on a friend’s recommendation and because I had seen some positive buzz about the album, so I was curious to see what sort of novel it was.

The novel hinges on a series of twists that are telegraphed from the opening few pages. As such, I read the whole book waiting hopefully for a follow-up turn that never came.

This is not helped by some weak and repetitive writing. I gave up on counting the instances of characters saying, “I’m just fucking with you” or of settings/characters being described by direct comparison to movies and/or actors. Overall, a disappointing read.

10/10

just finished. definitely worth the read if you are interested 10/10 stars from me. congratulations Bob

What a great performance!

I loved this audible so much and so did my kids! We would listen to it in the car on our way to and from school and we were all hooked! They would yell as the left the car “don’t listen until we get in the car!” Great work Sir!

Too safe for someone like Bobby; disappointing

I picked this up because I like Logic, but this leaves a lot to be desired. There were a lot of moments that were clearly just Logic jumping on a soapbox to talk about things he likes talking about, regardless of whether it had a place in the plot. There's a lot of pointless name-dropping of artists, novels, and other pieces of pop culture that makes it hard to take it seriously as it's own piece of work. There are some bright moments of prose, the premise is interesting, and I think there's some promise here in Bobby as an author, but I really struggled to finish it.

The whole thing felt very amateur. Going in, I realize that he's actually is a freshman author and that you should go in expecting some degree of amateurism, very few authors publish a debut novel that feels completely polished and professional, In light of that, I tried to be incredibly generous about it as I read, and I tried to find things I liked about it. And I found them; but there aren't nearly enough of them to make this worthwhile for me. It relies a lot on tropes, cliches, pop-culture references, and forced, unnecessary fourth-wall breaks that weren't particularly clever or valuable. The plot felt like a fanfic of Fight Club.

I really hope Bobby keeps writing, and I hope he moves a bit further away from the creative well he draws on for his music. Having listened to most of his music and having been to a few shows made it much harder to feel like much of this was very original. Lots of details, references, and ideas could easily be traced to this song, or that interview, that they really felt like recycled ideas. He says in the acknowledgements that the first part of this was written a while ago, in a difficult time for him, so it makes sense that he writes about what was happening at that time in both his music and in writing; it's not his fault that those pieces of media were released at different times. But even then, you'd hope to see a bit more evolution in those ideas in light of his lived experience. The story is about an aspiring author struggling on his first book, and knowing that Logic was also an aspiring author working on his first book was all a bit too on-the-nose for me. I can't think of any safer creative territory than 1) your life and character as it is now, and 2) messages that you've already delivered in other creative media, and this book leans entirely on both of those. I think Logic is very creatively gifted, which is why it was especially disappointing to see him stick to things that are clearly very comfortable ideas and topics for him. I hope these glowing reviews from people that are clearly die-hard fans of Bobby as a person don't encourage him to stay on this comfortable track.

The audiobook version is really good, there's some really clever and creative use of the medium in the form of using the soundtrack, sound-effects, and vocal inflection. Making a soundtrack for a book is a really interesting idea, it works well, and it's stuff like that that makes me feel like Bobby can really make some interesting, fresh literary work someday. I just think this isn't quite it.

Disappointed

I have no idea how this book has such good reviews. There were no twists and turns and super predictable. This book is like if a high schooler ripped off fight club

Predictable

This book was an entertaining enough listen, but the main plot points are very predictable and border on derivative

What could have been.....

There isn't one second of this that wasn't predictable. This story has been written so many times and by better writers. Besides the awful gratuitous language (in particular a couple of sex scenes), it often felt like a coming to age book, but the protagonist character is in his mid twenties. I wouldn't want my preteen or teen to read this. At other times it was educational, boarding teaching, but then it would just go wanky and not make sense. I can tell that if Mr Hall had used a ghost writer to help, it could have been a much better book. In saying all of this and agreed or not ( because his father doesn't care), my 16 year old nephew who loves this guy ask me to read it. I believe he relates to the book because of recent issues he has been going through. If this helps him at all and he feels comfort from it then I appreciate Mr. Halls effort, but it just isn't a well written book. If idioms and adjectives were stars then this would be a million star book. That is just my two cents worth.

Sophomoric

A very good narrator but not so good at writing. I'm not familiar with Logic so I don't know what his music is like but his writing is pretentious.

With all the allusions to Fight Club, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest it becomes a bit much. Heck, even the cover tries to look like Catcher In The Rye. He's over reaching here.

I think if he took some writing classes he might turn out to be a talent, but this is pretty bad.

The twists are obvious. The dialogue tries to be outrageous but it falls flat.

With all the great reviews I saw I was expecting something great and it turns out to be a pile of garbage. Be very careful. Most of the 10 star or 5 star reviews praising this book have ONLY READ THIS BOOK!!! If they say it's the best book they've read it's probably because it's the only book they've read. There is no way this would have been published if a famous rapper didn't write it!