Black Bag

Luke Kennard’s Black Bag is narrated by an unnamed thirty-seven-year-old actor whose failing career, unstable finances, intrusive thoughts and hunger for recognition make him unusually susceptible to the strangest role he has ever been offered. The novel is told in an intensely digressive present tense, with the narrator repeatedly addressing the reader, interrupting his own story and examining every passing thought for evidence that he might be brilliant, unbearable, mentally ill or morally defective.

At the beginning, he has not had paid acting work for three months, is behind on his rent and utility bills and measures his remaining financial security through cups of coffee he cannot afford. He insists that he loves being alive, before immediately qualifying that statement, and explains that he is an actor as though this accounts for the performance already taking place between narrator and reader.

His closest friend is Claudio, whom he has known since they were seven. Claudio, whose Portuguese mother led to the childhood nickname “the Cloud,” is now a highly successful video-game streamer. He broadcasts for hours each weekday to an enormous online audience and receives monthly subscriptions, advertising revenue and sponsorship money. The narrator admires Claudio’s charm while also using his old friend as a reassuring comparison. Whatever defects the narrator possesses, Claudio has more obvious addictions, a more chaotic history and an equally unstable sense of self.