Cover image of "Sucker," a novel about a Silicon Valley scandal

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Humor is a funny thing. What you find hilarious might leave me cold or even offend me deeply. And my own sense of humor, which some have found quirky, can make me laugh when no one else does. So, I’m prepared to believe that you’ll think Daniel Hornsby’s Sucker, a satirical treatment of the Silicon Valley scandal surrounding Theranos, is very funny, indeed. But I didn’t. In fact, even though the novel starts off promisingly enough, it veers so far off into fantasy that, in the end, it no longer deserves to be called satirical.

How can smart people be so stupid?

In fairness, Hornsby is a terrific stylist. His prose is fluent and always interesting. It’s the content—the plot and the characters—where the problem lies. Satire must rest on some semblance of reality. Sucker doesn’t. I really wish it had, since the publicly known facts of Elizabeth Holmes‘ criminal behavior so richly deserve the comic send-up this novel might have been. After all, the story itself is very hard to believe. Like the more recent FTX cryptocurrency scandal perpetrated by Sam Bankman-Fried, it’s very difficult to imagine why such an obviously smart person could be so very stupid.

Sucker by Daniel Hornsby (2023) 288 pages ★★★☆☆

Photo of Elizabeth Holmes, the central figure in a Silicon Valley scandal
Remember this woman? Since May 2023 she has been serving a term of eleven years in prison for defrauding investors in her company, Theranos. She’d claimed, falsely, to have developed a revolutionary technique to run more than 200 tests using only a drop of blood. In this novel, Olivia Watts and her company, Kenosis, bear a striking resemblance to the real-world con artist and her company. Image; Business Insider

This scion of a billionaire is a punk rock impresario

The story in Sucker begins simply enough. Chuck Gross, born Charles Grossheart, is the ne’er-do-well younger son of one of the planet’s most predatory billionaire industrialists. He’s hiding from his past in San Narciso (read: San Francisco) building a punk rock record company. Naturally, the company’s headquarters in an abandoned factory, is awash in all manner of drugs and interpersonal conflict. The label, of course, is losing money, but Chuck has trust funds that keep it afloat. He’s not doing nearly so good a job riding herd over the fractious and often insane punk rockers in his stable.

From Obnoxious Records to the veritable hell of Silicon Valley

Then a phone call from his old Harvard friend, Olivia Watts, sends Chuck’s life off on a new trajectory. Olivia is Silicon Valley’s sweetheart, founder and CEO of Kenosis. It’s a richly funded startup that employs legions of scientists who are attempting to defeat death. Yes, Olivia’s goal is immortality for all the world’s billions, which is just about as cockamamie an idea as any ever concocted. (Okay, I’ll admit it. That’s fair game for satire.) Since Olivia knows that Chuck is a Grossheart, and thus just one step from the family’s billions, she recruits him with an obviously bogus job offer. It’s not obvious to Chuck, though. He takes it seriously and proceeds to divide his time between Obnoxious Records (yes, that’s its name) and Kenosis. Soon enough, he’s deeply entrenched in the criminal madness of Olivia’s enterprise. People will die. And insanity will reign.

About the author

Photo of Daniel Hornsby, author of this novel about a Silicon Valley scandal
Daniel Hornsby. Image: Ryan Andrew Bruce – Star-Tribune

According to his publisher, “Daniel Hornsby was born in Muncie, Indiana. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, where he received Hopwood Awards for both short fiction and the novel, and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School.” (That’s a Master of Theological Studies to us humble outsiders.) Hornsby is the author of one other novel, Via Negativa, as well short stories and essays. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In the real world, articles in the Wall Street Journal brought down Elizabeth Holmes’s fraudulent company, Theranos. The reporter, John Carreyrou, later wrote Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (A cautionary tale about corporate power in Silicon Valley).

For an informative mainstream review of this book, see “‘Sucker’ evokes Elizabeth Holmes in a caustic satire of obscene wealth” by Ron Charles (Washington Post, July 4, 2023). But be prepared: it’s a spoiler.

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