For anyone who has speculated about what could happen with the miscellaneous social media accounts people have started and abandoned over the years — think Myspace, Friendster or the multitude of forgotten blogs still cycling through cyberspace — North Carolina author Joseph Worthen ventures into the nefarious world of dark-web chat rooms to assert a stunning possibility.
In his delightfully morbid and sardonically humorous debut novel, “All Trap No Bait,” Worthen articulates how personal information left on the web could be gathered to provide a fertile source of blackmail material.
It takes Beverly “Bev” Jane Ornett, an unemployed 24-year-old slugging through COVID during the summer of 2020 in Mobile, Alabama, a bit of sleuthing to figure out she is her own information breach. Initially, she can’t decipher how the self-proclaimed “demon” who reaches out in a chat room knows about embarrassing things that happened to her in 10th grade. And she certainly never told anyone about the dirty secret she is keeping from her sister.
Yet the demon contacts her on Dark Secret Alabama — a networking platform where “wayward and degenerate” poets share work — and hooks her in by offering to grant a wish. Bev follows the demon’s link to a website boasting her name as the URL and discovers that her mortifying private moments have been posted there alongside a picture of her at a poetry reading she has never seen before.
Credit: Tortoise Books
Credit: Tortoise Books
This alarming privacy breach hits her at a profoundly bad time. Not only is she a substitute teacher living in chronic poverty who is out of work for the summer, but most businesses have implemented a hiring freeze during the pandemic. Furthermore, her lease is expiring and roommate Olivia (her only remaining real-life friend) is about to move in with her rich Gen X boyfriend and his two Pomeranians. Bev anticipates couch surfing while living out of her decrepit Chevy Cobalt following her eviction. What could the demon possibly hope to gain from Bev?
The mystery driving the plotline aside, Worthen’s dedication to gritty, fringe and oddly fascinating details is what makes his unique world memorable. Given her circumstances, one might think Bev would ask for money when the demon offers her a wish. Instead, she wants help finding some eyebrow-threading tutorials that have disappeared from YouTube. They feature a Dutch woman named Nora, whose voice Bev relies on to fall asleep.
This is one of a handful of times Bev chooses a balm to her psyche over physical security. Another time, she uses her dwindling funds to send a prized possession to a YouTuber who posts videos of himself crushing items in a hydraulic press in slow motion. A recurring theme that proves frustrating throughout Worthen’s narrative is Bev’s failure to prioritize her own well-being.
Bev is an endearing mess whose ennui is palpable. A hapless figure who exists on the edges of society, she describes her appearance as “the girl from ‘The Ring’ if she went to Great Clips then lost her clarity of purpose” and readily admits she has “made no preparations and formed no goals.” Floating through life high on pilfered Xanax, a drink called “lean” that contains codeine cough syrup and promethazine, or any other mind-numbing substance she can procure, Bev’s main goal is to distract herself from her situation.
“All Trap No Bait” is an inventive story ripe with lingering imagery that is graphic but not gratuitous and features characters who are as damaged as they are destructive. Structured into three chapters that span a month each, June melts into July, which sizzles into August as Bev tries to unravel the identity of her blackmailer while staying afloat.
The narrative follows the antics of the poetry chat room members — including a suicidal rapper, an antagonistic webcam performer, an incel whose “poems” are lists of gun parts and Bev’s ex-boyfriend (whom she is beginning to suspect may be affluent). Through these characters, the author explores a multitude of issues that impact the working poor.
As Worthen observed in a recent Chicago Review of Books interview, “critically impoverished characters working at strip malls in Alabama” are rarely represented in literature. And in his opinion, the current trend toward autofiction is a “pretty naked method of laundering class privilege into literary prestige” because of the barriers that keep lower-income writers from pursuing advanced education or creative careers.
With Bev’s character, a college graduate and poet at heart, Worthen demonstrates how easily the conditions required for a working-class American to succeed can destabilize. All it takes is a change in job, housing, health or transportation to subvert security.
Although COVID doesn’t factor heavily into the storyline — until it does — by setting this story during the hotbed year of the pandemic, the author lays spectacular groundwork to disrupt every component of Bev’s life. It’s a wild and uncomfortable ride that focuses more on representation than redemption.
Ultimately, “All Trap No Bait” is an immersive voyage through unrelenting hardship that makes no excuses and offers no apologies. A scene in Denny’s perfectly encapsulates what Worthen is here to say about this world.
Bev is starving and desperately craving French toast but doesn’t have $15. After convincing herself she isn’t patriotic enough to deserve the American flag French toast, she orders a $5 bowl of strawberries and has what can only be considered a religious experience while devouring the fruit. The scene, like the novel, is as relatable for those who have navigated similar situations as it is eye-opening for those who have not.
FICTION
by Joseph Worthen
Tortoise Books
308 pages, $20.99
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