The Book of Outcasts
Matt Nagin
Strange Rebel Press (2025)
ISBN: 979-8218543525
Reviewed by Julie Porter for Reader Views (09/2025)
Matt Nagin’s The Book of Outcasts is a strange, satiric, farcical, outlandish, uncomfortable anthology about people who are considered outsiders. Many of them have unusual thoughts, unhealthy obsessions and fixations, are free thinkers in societies that do not have such luxuries or have severe psychological issues that are potentially destructive or psychopathic. It is a captivating series of short stories that are impossible to get out of the reader’s mind.
The best stories in the anthology are:
“The Flames of Nirvana”
Married couple Jill and Jim are on an Alaskan cruise in an attempt to save their faltering marriage. The two reveal hard truths to each other that have potentially devastating and dangerous consequences.
This is a story that is drenched in ominous foreboding between two characters who are practiced in hiding what they are really thinking or feeling. They are at the point where they are constantly irritated with each other and instead of imagining a divorce; they think of the reasons that they shouldn’t (For the kids, don’t want to start over, don’t want to be lonely etc.).
The Alaskan setting is symbolic of their marriage as they see different things. Jim sees desolation and cold, a barren and endless wasteland. Jill sees some beauty, like a rainbow reflected in the ice or a pod of whales floating by, but they are only temporary and only offer a fleeting bit of pleasure, but it does not last, leaving her more uncomfortable than ever. They are frozen and paralyzed by their revulsion for each other but indecision about freeing themselves from it.
Jill and Jim’s marriage is lying in wait for a violent act to occur. When it does, it opens the emotions that they had been trying to bury. It seriously states earlier threats that they made and then took back. For the first time, they are forced to really see each other as they really are.
“Valley of Darkness”
Sam Shepherd, a compulsive gambler, is in debt. After repeated efforts to win back the money are gone, he contemplates some violent and self-destructive actions. This story is a character study of an addict. Sam enters casinos, believing that he has some control over the circumstances and that his luck will pan out. Unfortunately, it always ends in money owed, broken trust, and desperate attempts to get out. His whole life is a cycle of wanting to get rich quick, going to a casino or betting track, placing bets, winning some, overconfidence, placing higher bets, losing, becoming frantic, losing it all, confrontations, and a frantic promise to pay them back later when he doesn’t have anything. It’s a cycle that Sam can’t break out of and at this point isn’t sure that he wants to.
Sam’s descent because of his addiction is like a descent into Hell. He becomes more inhuman as he loses the things and people that matter to him in the name of betting, winning, and losing. He does unconscionable things to his family and to himself that would have been repugnant to him a few days ago. By the end of the story, his addiction is the one that is in control, and he has nothing left.
“Nagin Vs. Nagin”
A fictionalized version of author Matt Nagin (we hope) is stalked by his doppelgänger who is also named Nagin. Nagin’s Double trashes him on social media, steals his identity, mocks him in fictional accounts, and accuses the original of plagiarism. The conflict intensifies as the two seek to destroy each other’s reputations, jobs, relationships, and lives.
This short story is a combination of Poe’s suspenseful tales of dark selves and doppelgangers combined with the meta-fictional self-awareness of authors like Dave Eggers and Flann O’Brien. Nagin’s Double doesn’t resemble Nagin; he is Nagin. And because he is Nagin, he knows his thoughts, process, and actions, and can respond accordingly sometimes before the original Nagin acts.
Whether he is an actual person assuming his name, a supernatural entity, an alternate personality, a fictional character, or a paranoid delusion is never answered. What is apparent is that Double is haunting Nagin, and Nagin responds by haunting him back. It gets to the point where no one is certain which one is the original Nagin — the narrator or the double.
Of course, the fact that Nagin himself is the author telling the story of the two Nagin adds another meta layer to the story. He is commenting on what the fictional version of himself is doing just as that version is commenting on another version. It could be an admission of mental illness, different aspects of his personality, or just having fun with narration. It introduces questions on the nature of reality and fiction and how they can merge so we cannot tell which is which.
“Whose Pandemic Is It Anyway?”
During a fatal airborne virus, contestants are encouraged to invest in gold brick currency in a pyramid scheme. The only catch is they have to knowingly spread the virus and infect as many people as they can.
This is a bleak, cynical satire that takes a savage look at society’s need for entertainment. Everything is for sale. Everyone is lying. The opening reveals this as we learn that the host, Eduardo Ramirez, who claims to be a Mexican immigrant, is actually Dave Brooks, an American playing a part. He is a willing ringmaster in this circus because he sold himself for fame and now sells everyone else.
This cynical jab shows that entertainment is often based on image and lies. The gold brick pyramid might be worthless, but the show and audience build it up. The people behind the scenes prepare the lie, and the consumers feast on it. Everything on the show is an image to sell people to advertise a few moments of glamor and wish fulfillment when they are surrounded by poverty, crime, disease, and death.
One of the most haunting passages is when people are caught by contestants and the audience in the studio and at home cheer for them to be infected. In an era of mass exploitation, everything is entertainment. Illness and death are treated like sporting events. Humanity and compassion are lost in the rush of getting their next entertainment fix. They are desensitized to pain. They cheer it on just to get that rush of seeing someone suffer for their pleasure.
Altogether, the stories in The Book of Outcasts by Matt Nagin reveal the author’s eye for detailing human weakness. Readers who appreciate unsettling stories about the dark side of human nature will enjoy these stories.