Hawk Mountain

March 1, 2022

In small-town New England, single dad Todd is enjoying the beach with son Anthony when he's approached by someone ominous from the past: Jack, the guy who cruelly bullied him in their teenage years. Jack just wants to catch up, have dinner, and maybe stay the night, then proceeds to shove himself threateningly into Todd's life. From the host of the popular podcast Against Everyone, suggesting that people don't easily change and that the horrors of high school live on. There's TV/film interest.

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May 30, 2022
Unresolved emotional conflict from adolescence haunts a man in Habib’s intensely unsettling debut. While at the beach, Todd Nasca, a high school English teacher estranged from his wife and raising his six-year-old son Anthony in a quaint New England town, crosses paths with Jack Gates, a former schoolmate who used to bully Todd. All smiles now, Jack insinuates himself into Todd’s life with disturbing ease, overstaying his welcome to sleep a few nights on Todd’s couch and gradually working his way into Todd and Anthony’s domestic routines. Then Todd finds out Jack answered a call from Todd’s wife without telling him, setting up a confrontation that is spectacularly hideous in its brutality. Habib laces his narrative with references to the books Todd assigns his students about “male bonding and camaraderie,” suggesting unspoken nuances of his relationship with Jack. The narrative also toggles between past and present, building tension en route to the revelation of an unexpected encounter between the two as teenagers that had major consequences on the course of their lives. Habib brings rich psychological insight to his characters, expertly observing how the conflicts of youth persist into Todd and Jack’s present. Though not for the squeamish, this dramatic tale soars.

Starred review from July 1, 2022
Single father Todd is doing his best to raise first-grader Anthony, whose mom took off shortly after Anthony's birth. In their new town, a small East Coast beach community, Todd works as a high-school English teacher and leads a quiet life with his son. One day, at the beach with Anthony, Todd is approached by his high-school bully, Jack, seemingly serendipitously. How did Jack find him, and what's he doing here? Jack immediately inserts himself in Todd's life, befriending Anthony and crashing at their house, and the men's intense psychological history bears down on Todd. His senior year of high school was marked by violence and ostracization because of Jack, leaving ripples throughout Todd's adulthood that contributed to his dysfunctional marriage and shaky confidence. Jack's return culminates in Todd's complete undoing, an epic tragedy that changes Todd, Anthony, and Jack forever. This heart-pounding thriller will have readers furiously turning pages, begging to better understand the complexities of masculinity, romance, friendship, and cycles of abuse that lead Todd and Jack down their ill-fated paths. Habib explores philosophical, political, and spiritual ideas on his counterculture podcast, Against Everyone, and this gorgeous debut affirms his stunning gift for dissecting humanity.

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Starred review from May 1, 2022
The reappearance of a childhood bully throws the life of a New England man into turmoil. When the book opens, Todd Nasca is spending time on the beach with his 6-year-old son, Anthony. They moved to New Granard four months ago, and soon Todd will start his position as a high school English teacher and Anthony will begin school for the first time. After having kept the boy out of kindergarten, Todd is anxious about his son entering the world; he feels like he's "pushing Anthony off a precipice." Todd and his wife, Livia, divorced four years ago after a brief and tepid marriage, but Livia is back from her travels in Europe with renewed interest in knowing the son she left behind. Todd is alarmed when a stranger approaches Anthony at the beach--except he turns out to not be a stranger at all. Jack Gates transferred to Todd's high school when both boys were seniors, but they haven't seen each other in years, and for good reason: Flashbacks detail how Jack viciously bullied Todd, calling him homophobic slurs, threatening him, and alienating Todd from their peers. Underlying the meanness was a tension that has followed both men to the present--a feeling it's possible they've been purposefully avoiding. When Todd presses, Jack is vague about the state of his marriage, how long he plans to stay, or if his sudden reappearance in Todd's life might be more than just coincidence. The longer Jack's around, the more Todd's discomfort grows, building to a shocking act of violence that inextricably links the characters and forces Todd down a path of alienation, lies, and madness. The tension is palpable on every page, and Habib skillfully illustrates the complexity of relationships and the pain of unmet desires, both queer and otherwise. His prose is as brutal as it is profound and beautiful: "Is everyone unhappy? Is everyone stuck? I think, Jack, I was happy sometimes; no, I was, I was before you, before you showed up; and you were happy when you got here, and Livia was happy before she met me, and Anthony was happy; and then, what? Everything is fine and then something shows up and you can't be happy after that; what is that?" A brutal and gorgeous tale of manipulation, control, and desire.

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