Chinese Gucci

by Hosho McCreesh

Fired from his fast-food job, stunted Millennial Akira Nakimura stumbles on to a lucrative hustle: selling high-quality knockoff designer purses as the real-deal via his dead mother's eBay store. On his south-of-the-border runs, Akira routinely gets in over his obnoxious and over-privileged head -- only finding solace at the Hotel Tulum. What will he do when his hyper-masculine façades crumble and all he's left with is the hard and ugly truth of his life?

DrunkSkull Books is proud to present this subtle American allegory and first novel by Hosho McCreesh.

414 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2018

About the author

Hosho McCreesh is currently writing & painting in the unrivaled gypsum & caliche badlands of the American Southwest. His work has appeared widely in print, audio, & online.

Reviews

[Alex Kudera · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend Chinese Gucci, and I wish I knew how to get this indie title into the hands of more readers. John Fante gets a nod in this novel, and the book has interesting parallels to Ask the Dust, a young American's coming of age with Mexico in the background, but it certainly hits on other levels, too. Actually, it'd probably count as a "not for everyone" title in a way similar to the novels of John Fante's son, Dan (see Chump Change), with its raw out-of-control central character. But the soul of the book is in how it captures the loneliness of late teen / early twenties internet anonymity and solitude as well as how the infatuation is never the girl the young hero gets. And the title hints at transnational commerce, commodification, the brand is everything, and the label is fake, our desperate hope that accessories and clothes could make the man or woman. When I was younger, I did not hang out with kids like the ones in this book, but Hosho McCreesh created a real world of them with an anti-heroic protagonist doing all the wrong things to avoid his tremendous loss. Good book.

[Hosho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contemporary poet turned debut novelist, Hosho has managed to create one of the most self-absorbed and angsty characters in literature, second only to Holden Caulfield.

Between stalking the girl of his dreams at the Double Rainbow, shirking his responsibilities at home, and hitting the road for a few always-hazardous-never-boring trips to Mexico, the socially inept Akira spends much of his time postuering and alienating his friends as he attempts to get rich quick by selling fake purses through his deceased mother's ebay shop.

Simultaneously intriquing and infuriating, Chinese Gucci found me shaking my head at Akira's ridiculous antics and yet I was unable to stop turning the pages.

[Joshua Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chinese Gucci moves through a slice of Akira Nakamura's life like a YouTube algorithm, burrowing deeper and serving you more, with no time to decide if you actually want it. Hosho's power as a poet serves up Nakamura in stanzas that gasp for connection in the wake of his mother's death while the world has its way with him. Akira seems largely oblivious to being the architect of his downward spiral—the millennial "cross to bear"—seeking ever greater levels of respect for his ficitional life as his reality gets more isolated and shallow. As a father on the cusp of going from four daughters in the house to only one, I felt particularly exposed to the reality of what coming of age is like in the gig economy. Chinese Gucci is a must-read stop on the Route 66 of the 21st century, a monument to the wake of the information age, on-demand knock-off purses and a ceaseless search for empty adoration in the form of emojis.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irreverent and easy to read, and am a sucker for a good "shitty kid" story in general. I found myself going back and forth between rolling my eyes inside at Akira's thought processes and understanding what he meant. I suppose it felt a little anti-climactic after he returned from the last Juarez trip but the series of increasingly terrible decisions followed the standard trope. Would certainly read more from McCreesh in future.

[Ben]

Promoted it, loved it and know you will too. The love part that is. Not that you can't promote it as well. Please do.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really impressive first novel that rewards the reader.

[Ryan Sholin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hosho hits all the notes he sets out to — halfway through I stopped worrying about whether Akira was going to get what he wanted and just sat back to enjoy the dusty downward ride.

[Dave Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucky enough to blurb this one:

Somewhere between a Harmony Korine film and a Tao Linn novel, Chinese Gucci is a book about desire and greed and being too spoiled to figure out your dreams. It's a book about being alive in the 21st century and maybe what all our futures will look like—buying and selling and gaming and drinking and drugging. Nights in Mexico. Days on the computer. Forgetting the difference between what's real and fake. The edges on this novel are sharp enough to cut the reader's throat. Filled with text messages and prose as clean as the best dirty realists, Chinese Gucci is a novel filled with characters no one wants, characters who do despicable things, characters who most of us are, and we all need to read it.

[Sheridan Cleland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akira Nakimura is not the protagonist we need, but he is the protagonist we deserve: borne of global capitalism, American consumerism, always-connected #likemeplease social media, one-click-away porn, and suburban delusions of grandeur. His desire to succeed isn't fueled by any need to prove himself right, it's simply to prove everyone else wrong. His need to get fucked up isn't self-medication precipitated by trauma, it's boredom. He's sad by choice, deservedly isolated, grossly entitled, and hopelessly pathetic – and I'll be damned if I didn't grow to love the guy anyway because through his shit-bag exterior and maniacal ego games you catch momentary glimpses of the scared kid in desperate need of a hug, not from his from father, but from the one person he'll never receive one from again: his mother. And it's heartbreaking because you know, even given her faults, a single hug from her – just one – would quell many a demon in Akira's head. And that's the heartbeat that pumps the toxic blood of Chinese Gucci's Americana: an absent parent. By circumstance in this instance, but absent nonetheless. Once you connect with Akira on that level, the whys of his absurd actions begin to unravel and reveal themselves so that by the time you finally arrive at a cairn and a candle you realize it hasn't been psychosis spurring him on, but tragedy, and your heart bleeds – because, ultimately, he's not a fucked up kid, he's just done some fucked up things. And haven't we all? Especially when a void suddenly appears in our lives that we don't know how to fill? That's the magic of Chinese Gucci: there's a little shit-bag Akira in all of us, whether we want to admit it or not. That McCreesh was able to conjure and sustain that magic in this debut novel is impressive. And his prose is a mean cocktail: one part Salinger, one part Bukowski, splash of Palahniuk, resulting in a transgressive coming-of-age tale smattered with poetic, lyrical beauty of the mundane prone to sudden eruptions of violence. And it ends in the most American way possible: a set of truck nuts in a belch of diesel smoke. Perfection. I don't know what McCreesh is up to, currently, but he better be writing, goddammit, because whatever he's selling, I'm buying.