“Panic … isn’t a disease of death. It’s a disease of life.”
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one. It’s very different to anything I’ve read—or listened to—before.
The fact it’s still on my mind probably means it struck a chord. I keep turning it over, wondering what the author wanted us to take from it. It was definitely unique, throwing us right into Nicholas’s mind and showing us how his panic attacks take hold, and how much they weigh on him.
Nicholas doesn’t have the easiest family life. His mum passes him on to his dad, and when he goes to live with his dad, he’s left alone because work takes priority. That pretty much leaves Nicholas to his own devices. His friends, too, don’t feel like real friends—they seem to use him more than support him.
I’ve noticed that other reviews of Pan highlight the philosophical nature of the story, the beautiful prose, and the intensity of teenage thought. That’s not really my style. If you’ve read my reviews before, you’ll know I focus more on how the story and characters made me feel.
So here’s my take: it was strange, it was different, and it was definitely a little weird—but not in a bad way. Would I recommend it? Yes, I think so. But I also believe that every single reader (or listener) will walk away with something different. For me, it was a story about a teenage boy worried about growing up and finding his place in life. I didn’t pick up on the rhythm of the words, the “beautiful prose,” or the artistic side of it—but that’s okay.
Thank you to Vintage Books for the opportunity to listen to and review Pan by Michael Clune.
About the Book
A strange and brilliant teenager's first panic attacks lead him down the rabbit hole in this wild, highly anticipated debut novel from one of our most distinctive literary minds
“I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune.” ―Ben Lerner, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Topeka School
Nicholas is fifteen when he forgets how to breathe. He had plenty of reason to feel unstable He’s been living with his dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs since his Russian-born mom kicked him out. Then one day in geometry class, Nicholas suddenly realizes that his hands are objects. The doctor says it’s just panic, but Nicholas suspects that his real problem might not be a psychiatric maybe the Greek god Pan is trapped inside his body. As his paradigm for his own consciousness crumbles, Nicholas; his best friend, Ty; and his maybe-girlfriend, Sarah, hunt for answers why—in Oscar Wilde and in Charles Baudelaire, in rock and roll and in Bach, and in the mysterious, drugged-out Barn, where their classmate Tod’s charismatic older brother Ian leads the high schoolers in rituals that might end up breaking more than just the law.
Thrilling, cerebral, and startlingly funny, Pan is a new masterpiece of the coming-of-age genre by Guggenheim fellow and literary scholar Michael Clune, whose memoir of heroin addiction, White Out—named one of The New Yorker’s best books of the year—earned him a cult fan base. Now, in Pan, the great novel of our age of anxiety, Clune drops us inside the human psyche, where we risk discovering that the forces controlling our inner lives could be more alien than we want to let ourselves believe.
I write about memory, literature, money, and music. Sometimes I work in creative nonfiction and fiction; some problems require academic methods. I believe that literary style isn’t decoration but a form of knowledge.
My creative books include a novel (Pan, forthcoming from Penguin in Summer 2025), and a work of creative nonfiction, Gamelife (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). The tenth anniversary edition of my memoir White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin appeared in 2023 from McNally Editions.
My most recent critical book is A Defense of Judgment (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Other monographs include Writing Against Time (Stanford University Press, 2013) and American Literature and the Free Market (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
My essays have appeared in Harper’s—where I am a contributing editor—Critical Inquiry, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The Atlantic, Best American Essays, PMLA, and elsewhere. My work has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim and Mellon Foundations, and my books have appeared on “best of the year” lists from The New Yorker, NPR, and elsewhere.
