Some reviews of Geoff Rickly’s novel Someone Who Isn’t Me (Rose Books, July 2023) will probably focus on the parallels between the book and Rickly’s biography. After all, the narrator and author share a name. Like Geoff, the main character works at a record label in Greenpoint, used to front a famous emo band, broke his nose onstage, had dealings with Martin Shkreli.
All reviews will mention the central resemblance: which is that Geoff, the character, treats his opioid addiction at an ibogaine clinic in Mexico through a supervised psychoactive trip that defies description–though Geoff Rickly, the author, has put pen to paper regardless.
The result is a multi-structured journey through the narrator’s memory and consciousness that sometimes resembles a skyline and other times the smallest domestic spiral. Within Someone Who Isn’t Me, time and interiority have their own structures, and Rickly’s interest in the built environment jumps off the page.
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