A blissful summer on the scenic coast of Delaware offers a quarter-life crisis, a doomed romance, and new vices in this charmingly funny literary novel.
Most of us have very little desire to relive that intrepid period of our twenties, defined by unemployment and overwhelming aimlessness. It seems, however, that author Mike Andrelczyk feels differently. He chronicles this precise moment in time with unexpected honesty and levity, finding the latent romance in a listless and ordinary summer. Submarines grapples with life, death, and fulfillment, extracting a nostalgia for a time you never thought you’d miss.
Our nameless protagonist, with an affinity for pseudonyms, has abandoned Los Angeles, his former probation officer, and a cockroach-infested apartment, for his Grandma’s house on the coast of Delaware. Tasked with caring for his aging Grandma, he staves off her inevitable nursing home move, cooking breakfast, playing bridge, and supplying her with enough cigarettes and Manhattans to keep her spirits high and her place with him.
Broke and hungover, our narrator spends his days haphazardly searching for a job and numbing his own existentialism. He assumes a new role at the Palms, a hotel in need of a charming, semi-present bellman. The renewed income only enables the self-soothing, and our narrator supplements his chronic sports betting with swaths of weed and pills. Leaning on these vices, he gambles away the remaining summer months, shirking his bellman duties and courting a girl primed to leave by the end of the season. He has a whole life ahead of him, and just as any twenty-something would, our narrator accepts any distraction that will quell his restless, searching mind.
“Grandma was right. I knew I had to do something. Make something of myself. Creation. Something to balance out the destruction.”
Grazing the 200-page mark, Andrelczyk keeps his storytelling tight and efficient, leveraging vivid metaphors and terse descriptions. His choice of figurative language stands out with diction that melds seamlessly with the feelings described. Submarines especially shines with its specificity, leaning on universal experiences to bore into our narrator’s mind.
“Sand bags of boredom hit me one morning and I couldn’t get out of bed.”
Submarines takes a sitcom-like approach to storytelling, sandwiching existential monologues with episodic humor. The writing is naturally contemplative, and from the perspective of a twenty-five-year-old, his orations garner easy empathy. Despite his questionable decision-making, our narrator’s ignorance is overshadowed by his sincerity. Playful and sardonic, he feels closer to an underdog, making him very difficult to dislike and very easy to root for.
Andrelczyk also naturally incorporates humor, relying on irony and drug-induced absurdity to pull smiles. Submarines cleverly optimizes this, using flippant remarks to undercut any lengthy self-seriousness. This element feels particularly human in how, perhaps at a disservice, we use levity to curb our vulnerability.
“A deathly feeling floated through my mind. It waved hello and left…A reminder of all that is temporary and all that is eternal. I wished I had some gum.”
While Submarines generally knows when and where to break tension, this comes occasionally at the expense of immersion. As the book develops, the narrator will at times break the fourth wall. It can feel jarring and potentially unnecessary, as the story, setting, and characters are so strong that these meta attempts of self-awareness detract from the enjoyment.
If you like your summers with a touch of melancholy, you’ll enjoy this quick, seasonable read. Narrated with dry quirkiness, Submarines doubles as contemporary fiction and quarter-life crisis that will have you chuckling and painfully swallowing within the same page.
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