Review: Supermarket by Bobby Hall, a bad thrift shop

Credit: Mike Holland

Supermarket is the debut novel written by Bobby Hall, better known as the rapper and singer, Logic. The book revolves around Flynn Montgomery, a boy who has suffered through a harsh break-up and has been given a book deal. To gain inspiration, he begins to work in a supermarket, but due to his mental health issues, Frank, his alter-ego, starts to cause humbug not only to the world around him but to the narrator himself.

Even though I respect the beauty of debuts in their flaws and imperfections, one of the very few good things about Supermarket is the cover. As Bobby Hall states in the book, it was written after a week of “binge-reading” novels, which has escalated into a bet of writing a book. It is split into two parts; the first one being a cliché Young Adult Fiction piece and the second being an excruciating Fight Club rip-off.

The author lacks any sort of originality throughout the piece. Workers in the supermarket are stereotypical (young black guy saying the n-word, Ronda, an older black female with dark humor and nihilist views) while Flynn himself is not authentic in anything he does. There is almost no imagery, as Bobby Hall just describes things around him in addition to cliché dialogues:

‘I looked at her, flushed. “I wanna buy combat boots with you.” “What? Why?”

“Because I wanna kick the world’s ass together”’

The ending of the novel felt like pure theft. The idea of a fight between Flynn and Frank was so similar to Durden and the Narrator that I had no idea which book of these two I was reading, the only indicator being cheesy descriptions and non-existing side plots. Logic sadly has created a book of almost no satisfaction. The biggest issue I have with the book is the fact that the ideas are not processed or changed in any way – they are kept there in the same manner as the pieces it was taken from. With that, this meta-literary piece has one of the cheesiest references to music and art. As I texted one of my friends while discussing this book: Diary of the Wimpy Kid meets Rick and Morty while listening to Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days.

Bobby Hall’s Supermarket exists more as a thrift shop of stolen things which put together form a tepid stream of nothingness. Everything in the novel was said or used before, it is filled with cliché, while motivational parts about self-growth and a raised middle finger to the “literary world” just felt like pure advocacy. This book provides a good Instagram post, but not really a good read, which is a shame as I loved the idea of a known young rapper also becoming a novelist.