A novel by Fredrik deBoer
October 7, 2025 • 5.5 x 8.25 • 168 pages • 9781566897372
In his debut novel, inveterate polemicist Fredrik deBoer shines a merciless light on our pervasive need to romanticize debilitating mental illnesses into dainty, loveable quirks.
In a dorm room at her safety school, surrounded by cornfed boys and contemptuous girls, Alice is losing her mind. Her first semester is spent clinging to middling grades between drunken hookups and roommate fights. The next brings sleepless nights, extreme weight loss, and effortless, compulsive energy, paused only by an unexpected summoning from the RA for evaluation. Thus begins an endless march of lithium, antidepressants, and Klonopin; doctors and therapists—when health insurance allows—along with overwhelmed parents and well-intentioned friends; all helpless bystanders as Alice descends deeper into chaos.
Evoking the wry precision of a digital age Flaubert, The Mind Reels is as horrific and captivating as an impossibly intrusive case study, peeling back society’s polite trappings to expose the realities of mental illness.
About the Author
Fredrik deBoer is a writer and academic. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Playboy, and Harper’s among many others. His nonfiction books include The Cult of Smart (All Points Books, 2020) and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (Simon & Schuster, 2023). He holds a PhD in English with a concentration in writing assessment and higher education policy from Purdue University. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, his son, and his cat Suavecito.
Praise for Fredrik deBoer
“Oh man, this book. Fredrik deBoer’s The Mind Reels is one of the most precise and harrowing depictions of mental illness I’ve ever read. This is a relentless, compassionate, and beautiful debut novel. I couldn’t look away.” —Andrew Martin, author of Cool for America
“[O]ne of the sharpest and funniest writers on the internet. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he’s always thoughtful and he pushes me to think.” —Pamela Paul, The New York Times
"He writes like a dream, has a relentless intellect, and is always, always worth reading.” —Andrew Sullivan
“DeBoer stands out as the genuine article—deliberate, wide-ranging, lionhearted, and invariably worth reading.” —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction