Percival Everett, Telephone. Graywolf Press, 2020. 232pp. Link.
Source: borrowed from San Diego County Library, Poway branch

Everett always has an inventive conceit going (here it's the random appearance of paper scraps bearing cries for help in Spanish in used clothing purchases from an internet shop) alongside a conventional plot (here it's a tragic story of a family disintegrating as a young girl's life slides into death by Batten disease). What to do with it all?

Everett is clever at invention. The Trees is my favorite novel of his. James has a smartly executed conceit as has been lauded, prize-awarded, gilded, and re-canonized as the parody of a parody.

Telephone does a lot, moves between ill-fitting plots with some craft and elegance, but can't make them fit together or shake some dreary tropes, like the lingering stink of a prurient campus novel and a narcissistic savior plot.

According to Wikipedia and the publisher, the biggest conceit was hidden, which is that there are three different endings to the book! I got one and maybe it was kinda middling. But another conceit that is smart and inventive but, well, didn't really ship.