An acclaimed Pacific Grove author’s third novel is an engrossing reflection on the times.

When novelist Mark Sarvas moved to Pacific Grove in 2020, he was already an author of two well-received novels. He recently went on to publish his third, titled @UGMan, inspired by Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and – if you can believe this combination – social media.

The effect is mesmerizing.

@UGMan is a satire or cautionary tale, Sarvas says, about what happens to people who live their lives on the internet, meaning pretty much all of us. It’s a trap, as we learn from the novel, that demonstrates all the consequences of the internet era – our shortening attention span, fractured way of communication, the tendency to live in social bubbles and affinity for believing conspiracy theories.

It is also a novel about digital-era loneliness. The main character gets more and more lost in his head, more detached from his close ones. But even if it could be prematurely classified as an “internet novel,” @UGMan is a literary and philosophical commentary on modern human existence.

“I started writing the book a few months after the 2020 election, and finished before Elon Musk bought Twitter,” Sarvas says.

Eager to convey his anger and anxiety caused by the reality in the U.S., he found the writing voice and completed the first draft quickly. Since the novel follows many social media forms and conventions, it is impossible not to ask Sarvas about the long-proclaimed “death of the novel” as a form.

“‘Death of the novel’ has been taking place for a hundred of years now,” he says. “But I think that the novel is still essential. I have great confidence in this form; writers are still pushing and playing with it.”

Sarvas says he “got lucky” as a writer. Originally from New York, then working in Los Angeles, he had a popular literary blog, The Elegant Variation, before he sold his first novel Harry, Revised, published in 2008, followed by Memento Park in 2018.

“It’s not enough if your book is good. It’s not even enough if the book is very good,” he says. Yet, after publishing his third “more than very good” novel, Sarvas is not giving up on his craft. He is currently working on “a gentle comedy to distract and entertain people,” he says.

MARK SARVAS talks about @UGMan at 6pm Sunday, July 27. BookWorks, 667 Lighthouse Ave., Pacific Grove. Free. 372-2242, bookworkspg.com.