Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A raunchy, darkly funny, unusual coming-of-age novel set largely underneath the waters of the Pacific Ocean. David, nicknamed “Dead Man,” is a U.S. submarine radio operator nearing the end of his hitch. On the one hand, he feels keenly the tedium, the fear, and the cramped dark rigidity of life in the Navy; there’s the tug to go home and get on with the life others have envisioned for you. Against that, though, there’s the secret, profane, addictive, uproarious rapport that develops in the deep sea, in Dead Man’s beloved “steel tube of dumb,” created by the combination of claustrophobia and camaraderie. Murphy playfully and persuasively recreates the scabrous, hilarious, often juvenile sociolect of these young submariners, the language of young men barking and fronting. Dead Man tries hard to think of his experiences as a kind of idyll, but it’s an idyll on a razor’s edge: The casual violence (sometimes almost joyous) and little upwellings of insanity (colorful, the stuff of anecdote) can’t be contained. His closest friend on the ship, Grenadier, tries to commit suicide. The malign ship’s doctor pressures Dead Man to surveil his other close friend, Tintin, who’s suspected of being a Chinese spy. Then Grenadier drowns, and Dead Man—being punished by Doc both for noncooperation and because he knows that the doctor was drugging Grenadier to keep him docile—finds himself exiled from the sub and on base duty in Guam as Covid descends. The book’s second half depicts Dead Man’s turbulent, reluctant return to David: the trip home, mustering out, and the transition to a midwestern campus where he feels utterly out of place. He’s haunted at first by the needling ghost of Grenadier, who seems mostly to want to goad him to give college a try. Once David (or “Death Man,” as a new friend garbles the nickname) arrives and after a few months starts, tentatively and precariously, to find friends, Tintin—an agent of id and rage and chaos—arrives to sow destruction, and to make it clear to David that these two worlds aren’t compatible. He will have to choose. The rollicking, sometimes frightening, in-the-end surprisingly moving evolution of a submariner into a mensch. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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Murphy (The Call) serves up a mordant comedy about a young U.S. Navy sailor’s coming-of-age during and after his service. David “Dead Man” Sterling is a radioman onboard a fast attack sub patrolling the waters off the coast of China. In this high-pressure environment, Dead Man is forced to deal with Doc, a lifer who has it in for him because he’s been emailing Doc’s girlfriend. Other colorful characters include the sub’s captain, a Texan whose voice reminds the crew of Matthew McConaughey’s character Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, prompting them to reply to commands with Wooderson’s catchphrase, “Alright, alright, alright”; and Tintin, whom Dead Man suspects of being a Chinese spy. Deciding not to reenlist, Dead Man returns home, enrolls in college, and majors in writing, but finds life stateside altered by Covid restrictions and Black Lives Matter protests. Nevertheless, he makes new friends at school, gets high marks for his writing, and meets a girl who seems interested in him. But a visit from a former crewmate threatens to undo all of this as he forcefully tries to convince Dead Man to reenlist. Dead Man makes for a likable hero, and the shipboard scenes are realistically salty and claustrophobic. The result is quite possibly the best novel about the peacetime Navy since Darryl Ponicsan’s The Last Detail. (Nov.)

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Murphy, a fiction writer of vibrant imagination, wit, and nuance, returns after a long hiatus with a bravura first-person performance in the voice of a kind and curious submarine radioman. Based on Guam, far from his New England family, David—large, tall, funny, and nicknamed Dead Man—is a reader and a storyteller. His parents want him to go to college, but he’s devoted to the bizarreness of life inside “a big steel tube of dumb.” The pages fizz with the crew's profane and colorful slang as he vigorously conveys the mix of tedium, stress, camaraderie, absurdity, and drama that pulses in that compressed world as they work their shifts, have hilarious debates, and confide in each other. David's buddies, Grenadier, who is worried about his marriage, and Tintin, who is in love with a stripper, end up in conflict as concerns about a spy on board intensify, and Doc, more harsh than healing, puts David in a tough spot. David finally sets his sights on college with the intention of becoming a writer. This fish-out-of-water shift casts light on the struggles of veterans as David tries to adjust to another strange contained world and embrace his new calling while being haunted by his shipmates. Murphy has created a soulful and charismatic protagonist in an uncanny, transfixing, and revelatory bildungsroman.