Steady Diet of Nothing

Author: Cynthia Cruz Publisher: Four Way Books (2023) In this debut novel, Cynthia Cruz administers an IV drip of capitalist entropy that keeps us rapt: Steady Diet of Nothing compels readers to consume it in one headlong sitting. Charting the dissolution of an adolescent runaway community, the book follows a teenage girl, Candy, after her arrival at the Blue House — an abandoned home inhabited by other children seeking shelter from the world. Here, she falls in love with Toby, a boy from elsewhere whose companionship interrupts the perpetual alienation of the status quo. “He didn’t explain, but I knew,” Candy says. “I knew as soon as he’d started talking, that we’d come from the same place.” Beyond their den’s walls, the market reigns, and the societal structure of infinite calculation and infinite exchange has rendered contemporary life meaningless. As Toby and Candy separately descend into drug addiction and prostitution, they find their efforts to defy the American economic superst