LARB Book Club Discussion: “Fresh, Green Life” by Sebastian Castillo

Join LARB staff and members in conversation about the latest Book Club pick, Sebastian Castillo’s Fresh, Green Life! Dive into a compulsively readable journey through philosophy, literature, and the antihero’s pursuit of self-improvement. The conversation will take place on July 30, 2025, at 6 p.m. PST on Zoom. Log in to your account before registering for the discussion here.

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After experiencing a mysterious heart-related health scare, our narrator, Sebastian Castillo, who shares his name with this book’s author, resolves to spend a year alone in self-imposed exile, passing the time by exercising each day and watching self-improvement videos.

But come New Year’s Eve, Sebastian will break his expulsion from everyday life by accepting an invitation to the home of a former philosophy professor for a reunion with his cohort, one decade after graduating. This invitation surely would have been ignored if not for the promised attendance of Maria, Sebastian’s former classmate and love interest. What follows is an inexplicable series of fascinating events charting the erosion of young, bookish hope.

Fresh, Green Life is a meditation on literature, education, and philosophy, a trek through the past that forecasts a mediocre future, and a compact miracle of the fake-real.

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“Our narrator in Fresh, Green Life, one ‘Sebastian Castillo,’ is a contemporary anti-hero, a descendent of Underground Man and Zama—neurotic, pretentious, and willfully lonely, a minor fraud and struggling academic, an adorably wretched idealist—who asks us, as we spend a few hours in the ‘life-world’ of his mind, to consider the gap between passivity and action, between genius and stupidity, and what it might mean to live our philosophy. A hilarious and unpredictable novel.”—Elisa Gabbert, author of Any Person Is the Only Self

“Exposing the thin lines between discipline and vanity, rigor and pretension, discourse and isolation, Fresh, Green Life is a surreal, compulsively readable portrait of a disenchanted scholar. Castillo writes with humor and humility, masterfully endearing his fictional counterpart to the reader as his hero seeks the ‘delicious nonsense’ of his school days and a reason to break his yearlong vow of silence. Fresh, Green Life is a disarming, absorbing, and singular novel.” —Emily Adrian, author of Seduction Theory, and LARB contributor

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Sebastian Castillo is a writer and teacher living in Philadelphia. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and grew up in New York. His work has appeared in New York Tyrant, Peach Mag, Electric Literature, Joyland, Epoch, BOMB, and elsewhere. He is the author of 49 Venezuelan Novels, Not I, SALMON, and The Zoo of Thinking.

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LARB Friend-level members and higher receive a free copy with their membership and access to the discussion. All other members are invited to join the discussion and purchase a copy of Fresh, Green Life at a bookstore near you, or through our partnership with Bookshop.org. Check out the latest membership newsletter for the 10% off discount code with Bookshop.org, or email us!

If you are not a member, please upgrade or join to access member-only perks, like the LARB classic tote, a subscription to our signature print magazine, conversations with LARB editors and members, and more. Join the LARB Book Club and support the work of LARB staff and writers.

If you have questions or thoughts about the book that you want to address during the discussion, please email membership@lareviewofbooks.org before July 29, 2025.