MacKenzie Scott’s novel called ‘confusing’: critics wonder what message she’s trying to send

But what many of them discovered was confusion.

The writer and editor Eve Sneider, for her part, called the ending of the book “a disconcerting conclusionion worthy of a confusing project” in his Business Insider review, and said that readers come away with more questions than answers about what Scott meant. The New York Post called it “difficult to untangle.”

Scott published the novel chapter by chapter on Substack starting August 8. Last Days in Two Nations (A Story in Eighteen Minds) in this way, she bypassed a publishing house and any major bookseller, including Amazon, where she has held a roughly 4% stake since her divorce in 2019. The approximately 80,000-word, 317-page book was free to anyone with a subscription, and the final installment was released on August 31.

The novel takes place in the near future, with America divided into two: the “Always United” States and an authoritarian separatist regime called the Dakota Membership, led by a president named Damian Paxton. Scott tells the story through the perspectives of 18 characters, which Sneider described as a “departure” from his earlier, more conventional fiction. His other works are The Luther Albright Ordeal (2005) and Pitfalls (2013).

Scott never really wanted to take the easy way out when writing. After all, she trained under the inimitable Toni Morrison.

“I tend to be interested in complex problems more than simple ones,” Scott said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2013. “I like working on long projects. I like to constantly analyze conversations, think about words, and tinker with words.”

“Deliberate ambiguity must still earn its place”

But it is this complexity that the critics come up against. Beyond the plot, Sneider took issue with the way the story was presented: downloadable PDFs formatted like a manuscript in progress. She also said it was double-spaced and contained a few typos that she said made the book feel unfinished.

Other media outlets have neglected the work’s literary elements, comparing the novel’s characters to both Bezos and the second Trump administration.

Not everyone sees this confusion as a failure. Morissa Schwartz, founder of GenZ Publishing and Ph.D., said Fortune the ambiguity seems intentional – at least in the prologue and epilogue, the sections she evaluated.

“The ambiguity seems intentional in the framing sections,” Schwartz said. “But deliberate ambiguity must still earn its place. A reader can accept uncertainty about the meaning of an event while still needing clarity about who is speaking, when, and what is at stake. These are different types of confusion.”

She also warned against reading the book as roman à clef– a novel in which real people appear thinly disguised as fictional characters – about Scott’s ex-husband or anyone else.

“The search for a real-world counterpart can become a distraction if it turns every character into a clue and leaves their psychological contradictions unread,” Schwartz said.

A mixed reception is nothing new for Scott. Luther Albright won an American Book Award, but Pitfalls elicited a colder response. Katy Waldman wrote in The New Yorker in 2019, it had few of the merits of Scott’s first novel and “most of its faults”.

Scott’s other two novels were through traditional publishers; a Substack spokesperson said Inc. the platform had not been warned of its arrival.

“We want to give people the tools and flexibility to publish on their own terms, without needing an invitation or permission from us,” they said. Inc..

Scott almost never responds to press inquiries, whether about his writings or his philanthropic efforts. The novel is still free to read on Substack, so for now, this may be the clearest statement she’s willing to make.