If you haven't had enough of George Santos, try reading an entire book about him

• I recently read Mark Chiusano's "The Fabulist" after a year of covering George Santos.
• The book, dealing mostly with Santos's pre-Congress life, is set to be adapted into an HBO biopic.

Maybe you've had your fill of the recently expelled Rep. George Santos, eager to see the New York Republican recede into the purgatory of niche internet celebrity before what could be a significant stint behind bars.

Or maybe you're obsessed, craving more content since his recent interview with the comedian Ziwe and contemplating gifting one of his overpriced Cameo videos to a loved one for Christmas.

In either case, Mark Chiusano's "The Fabulist" is probably worth a read.

The more than 200-page Santos biography, rapidly reported and published in less than a year, is already on its way toward being adapted into an HBO biopic. And aside from delivering an avalanche of bizarre new scooplets and anecdotes about the life and times of George Santos, the book does something that few have been able to do: It humanizes him.

Not that Santos himself is interested in further probing of his background, at least when it's not on his terms. As recounted in the book, the ex-congressman once told Chiusano that he would "go to the depths of hell to get a restraining order form [sic] you" in response to a fact-checking request.

And in his interview with Ziwe, Santos declared — visibly perturbed — that the book is a "fucking fiction."

"I loved that part, because I don't really know what he's referring to," Chiusano told me in a recent interview. "Is it my piece of it, or his piece that's fiction?"

Jokes aside, the book provides the most holistic account of Santos to date, covering his youth, his time as a drag queen in Brazil, his days working in a Dish network call center, his time as a less-than-trustworthy roommate with sticky fingers, and of course, his foray into politics that resulted in his semi-accidental arrival in Congress.

At times, you can't help but have sympathy for the guy, who by all accounts had a difficult upbringing and often found himself as an outsider looking in. This, Chiusano explains in the book, is likely a key driver of the man we now know.

"He always was kind of looking for something more than what he had," Chiusano told me. "He always had this ambition for something greater."

But throughout the book are frequent reminders of the harms that Santos's ambition has wrought upon the world, whether it's the heart-wrenching story of how he was accused of ripping off a down-and-out veteran with PTSD or the hundreds of thousands of constituents who had the burden of being represented by a serial liar.

It was that second point that I often tried to drive home in my own coverage of Santos as a Capitol Hill reporter — that despite his bloviating rhetoric and his embrace by some as an ironic icon, his own cloud of scandal had made him one of the least effective lawmakers in Washington, largely unable to attract cosponsors for his bills and unable to influence legislation via committees.

"There's many George Santos's," Chiusano told me. "One of them is definitely this kind of funny, very current millennial figure who is well-versed in social media memes and culture."

"The other one," he continued, "is a kind of deeply cynical and kind of dangerous person, who's willing to say the wildest things."

As for Chiusano himself, perhaps his key strength is his ability to craft a strong narrative.

Rather than a tedious recitation of every single lie and misdeed associated with George Santos, he instead paints a complex portrait of a real human being who seems to lie as a way of life. He speculates at one point that Santos suffers from pseudologia fantastica, a form of pathological lying in which the subject believes at least some portion of the fantasies they weave.

If you read the book, you probably don't need to bother with the legalese of a 23-count superseding indictment or a lengthy report from the House Ethics Committee — the key facts of how Santos mixed politics and personal gain are right there in the book, in easily digestible form.

Finally, the book will help you understand more than the particular drama of just one messed-up guy.

Drawing on his own knowledge of Long Island, Chiusano chronicles the unique circumstances that led to Santos's shock victory — a wave of resentment driven by COVID, crime, and cultural conservatism that Santos had just the right skill set to harness.

And there's plenty of reflection on the state of American politics as it is today, a place Chiusano describes as the "perfect place for a status-conscious person interested in performance, storytelling, money, and messiness."

"Politics has always provided cover for alienated people, for those who feel a little like they don't fully belong," he writes at one point.

Whatever you make of Santos and his bizarre second act as a camp cultural figure, there's little denying that his story is one of the most compelling political narratives in recent memory, a lower-stakes product of the ascendance of Donald Trump.