Next: A Novel

Next (2019) is a novel by James Hynes. It won the 2011 Believer Book Award.

Fifty-year-old Kevin Quinn is a garden-variety, rather ordinary American male, liberal, self-centered, and emotionally damaged. His main life goals include avoiding pain and responsibility. Quinn is in the throes of a life crisis. His job as an editor working for a state university in Ann Arbor Michigan has grown stale and seems pointless. He is tired of his life in Michigan, tired of his significantly younger and overbearing girlfriend, Stella. After a pivotal turning point in his relationship with her, he decides to fly to Austin, Texas without telling her, for a job interview he knows little about.

Kevin has chosen the worst week in which to travel after a series of terrorist attacks in Europe and the UK. These events heighten Kevin’s rampant fears and obsessions since 9/11 occurred. His fears are palpable; they materialize as he suspiciously eyes his fellow passengers, simultaneously wondering if a bomb or air missile could take down the plane. Feeling somehow singled out by life, an irksome sense of disquiet permeates Kevin’s thoughts.



Once aboard the plane, Kevin flirts awkwardly with Kelly, the young and beautiful Asian woman sitting next to him. Kelly reminds him of a long-ago college love and his youth. Kevin often finds himself lost in his own thoughts, dwelling on the past. He desperately craves a distraction from the present, and Kelly fits the bill. Kevin lands safely with his neuroses fully intact yet hopeful that this new potential job in a new city will be a chance for reinvention. The next eight hours make up the remainder of the story.

As he awaits his interview, Kevin’s thoughts turn to the woman he just met on the plane. He cannot stop thinking of Kelly. When he runs into her again, this time in front of a Starbucks, he actively pursues her. As Kevin follows Kelly around Austin, recalling his past failed relationships, his persistent self-absorption reaches its apex. In the wake of real terroristic threats, this soft-core stalking of a young woman lends a creepy vibe to the narrative.

Kevin embarks on a series of mundane activities during his time in Austin. He takes a cab downtown, visits two coffeehouses, scuffles with a dog, sustaining an injury requiring medical treatment, meets a surgeon, visits a supermarket and a Mexican restaurant. During his unremarkable day, Kevin reminisces about his ex-girlfriends, his time spent working as a record store clerk, and all of his memorable blowjobs. He spends most of the novel entertaining thoughts of women and thinking about cheating on Stella with almost every woman he encounters on his trip.



Hynes’s novel is a study on caustic humor and observation. Kevin loses himself in his fantasies while his life is crying out for his attention. He is brooding is chronic, taking up residence in his head along with a running commentary on society’s ills. Though Hynes’s uses dark humor to push the plot forward, it remains slow and localized until the end. Kevin is a skirt chaser, obsessed with sex, but the mundane aspects of his trip are the set-up for the last fifty pages of the book which is where the real shocker lies. Hynes draws intentional connections throughout the novel, drawing the reader in. Next requires a patient reader, one willing to wait for an unforeseen ending. It is a novel that strives to leave the reader breathless and speechless. It reduces one down to one’s most isolated self, intimating that this may be all there ever is.

Hynes is a Michigan native. He attended the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, Miami University, the University of Texas, and Grinnell College. He is the author of five fictional works, including Kings of Infinite Space, The Lecturer’s Tale, Publish and Perish, The Wild Colonial Boy, and Next. His book reviews and essays have appeared in the Boston Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Salon. Next is Hynes’s fifth novel. He resides in Austin, Texas.