Archives de catégorie : Literary

FAKE ACCOUNTS de Lauren Oyler

A whip smart, funny and biting literary debut about relationships in the age of social media and conspiracy trolls

FAKE ACCOUNTS
by Lauren Oyler
Catapult, early 2021


FAKE ACCOUNTS opens in January 2017 as our unnamed narrator, a young woman in a post-election tailspin, decides there’s never been a better time to break into her boyfriend’s cell phone. She discovers Felix (if that’s his real name…) is secretly a quite popular online conspiracy theorist. That’s the first in a series of Russian doll-like revelations that send her reeling and inspire a move from New York to Berlin, where she becomes a small-scale compulsive liar—though in her defense, mainly with OkCupid dates. As our narrator approaches her relationships with the wary hopefulness of someone whose beloved pet recently bit her, a series of jaw-dropping deceptions follow suit. Thrumming underneath it all is the age-old question that has gained new urgency as the internet has inundated us with the thoughts and opinions of unprecedented numbers of other people: am I going crazy?
Combining the “voice of a generation” quality of Adelle Waldman and Sally Rooney with bursts of exquisite observational humor reminiscent of Otessa Mosfegh and Maria Semple, the result is an energetic exploration of social media, sex, feminism, online dating, astrology, fiction, and the « connection » they’ve all promised but failed to deliver.

Lauren Oyler’s essays on books, pop culture, and feminism have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the Cut and elsewhere. She is the co-author of two books with Alyssa Mastromonaco, the former deputy chief of staff for President Obama: Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?, a New York Times bestseller, and So Here’s the Thing…, published on March 5, 2019. She grew up in Hurricane, West Virginia, and lives in Brooklyn. She spends as much time in Berlin as possible.

WRITERS & LOVERS de Lily King

The last days of a long youth, a time when everything comes to a crisis

WRITERS & LOVERS
by Lily King
Atlantic Monthly Press March 2020

Casey Peabody has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way—it’s strange, not to be the youngest kind of adult anymore.

And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at one corner of a love triangle, stuck between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.

LILY KING is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, and Euphoria, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014 and winner of the Kirkus Prize. She lives with her husband and children in Maine.

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS de Joshua Henkin

In the vein of Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves, Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood, and Magda Szabo’s The Door, Morningside Heights is an epic novel about love and loyalty, privilege and faith

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
by Joshua Henkin
Pantheon, March 2020

Morningside Heights tells the story of Pru Steiner, an Orthodox Jew raised in Ohio, who, in 1975, falls in love with Spence Robin, MacArthur winner and the youngest art historian ever to receive tenure at Columbia. Her career derailed by an early marriage to a powerful and acclaimed man, Pru settles into an ambivalent domesticity, raising their daughter Sarah. Spence, meanwhile, has been keeping a secret: an earlier marriage, which produced a son, Arlo, with whom he’s no longer in touch. Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The great art historian can’t focus. Still in his fifties, he becomes taciturn and forgetful. With their daughter in medical school in California, Pru must face his illness on her own. Arlo, now a wealthy venture capitalist with access to a promising experimental drug, has gotten back in touch. Pru, meanwhile, is struggling for money. She can’t afford Ginny, the domestic aide who takes care of Spence. And she has met a man at a caregiver’s class and the threat of romance looms. Spanning time zones and decades, Morningside Heights tells the story of a marriage enduring through adversity, and how ties of blood, long frayed, persist in the face of misfortune.

Joshua Henkin is the author of the novels Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book; Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book; and The World Without You, which was named an Editors’ Choice Book by The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune and was the winner of the 2012 Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction and a finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award. He directs and teaches in the MFA program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College.

DOXOLOGY de Nell Zink

Two generations of an American family come of age—one before 9/11, one after—in this wildly original novel from the “intellectually restless, uniquely funny” (New York Times Book Review) mind of Nell Zink

DOXOLOGY
by Nell Zink
Ecco, Spring/Summer 2019

Pam, Daniel, and Joe might be the worst punk band on the Lower East Side. Struggling to scrape together enough cash and musical talent to make it, they are waylaid by surprising arrivals—a daughter for Pam and Daniel, a solo hit single for Joe. As the ‘90s wane, the three friends share in one another’s successes, working together to elevate Joe’s superstardom and raise baby Flora. On September 11, 2001, the city’s unfathomable devastation coincides with a shattering personal loss for the trio. In the aftermath, Flora comes of age, navigating a charged political landscape and discovering a love of the natural world. Joining the ranks of those fighting for ecological conservation, Flora works to bridge the wide gap between powerful strategists and ordinary Americans, becoming entangled ever more intimately with her fellow activists along the way. And when the country faces an astonishing new threat, Flora’s family will have no choice but to look to the past—both to examine wounds that have never healed, and to rediscover strengths they have long forgotten. At once a biting takedown of today’s political climate and a touching invocation for humanity’s goodness, Doxology offers daring revelations about America’s past and possible future that could only come from Nell Zink, one of the sharpest novelists of our time.

Nell Zink is the critically acclaimed author of “Nicotine”, “Private Novelist”, “Mislaid”, and “he Wallcreeper”. Her writing has appeared in n+1 and Harper’s. She lives in Germany.

LUCIA IN LA-LA-LAND de Tien-Yi Lee, un roman prometteur

Pour son agent américain il s’agit de l’un des meilleurs livres qu’elle n’ait jamais représenté. Pamela Dorman vient d’en acheter les droits nord-américains pour Penguin, et scouts et éditeurs étrangers s’y intéressent déjà :

A brilliant, heart-warming, language- and plot-driven examination of madness, identity, unexpected family ties, and the perpetual friction between love and duty

LUCIA IN LA-LA-LAND
by Tien-Yi Lee
Penguin US, TBA

The novel, told through three different POV’s starts as we see the irrepressible Lucia Bok recently married to her older husband, Yonah, a tough, charismatic Israeli with a glass eye. Together, they live on the Lower East Side. They run an organic grocery store. They think they will live happily ever after but Lucia’s older sister Miranda is wary. When Lucia starts to act a little “off” and ends up in a mental hospital Lucia and Yonah think she just needs some rest. Miranda knows better. Lucia is in fact bipolar and has had an episode before. Lucia needs to be stabilized and put on the right meds, and her husband is enabling her by letting her just come home. But there is nothing Miranda can do. You can’t force a patient to stay in a hospital and even if they stay, you can’t force them to take medication. And so, Lucia returns home, but not for long. When her affliction ramps up again, Lucia decides she wants a baby and since Yonah does not, Lucia disappears.
Enter Manny, an undocumented Ecuadorian immigrant, who starts to date Lucia. Once she gets pregnant, he is swept into her whirlwind and is blindsided when her illness takes a psychotic turn after the birth of the child. Co-dependent Miranda, having moved far away to Switzerland in an attempt to live her own life, flies back to get Lucia straightened out—if only it were that easy. Attempting a fresh start, Lucia decides she, Manny, and the baby should move to rural Ecuador. But as they plow ahead there, Lucia’s actions spawn unintended consequences for those she loves, and she, like the others in her family, struggle to find balance between self-fulfillment and moral obligation. At its heart, Lucia In La-La Land is the story of a young woman’s quest to have a family, a life, and not be defined by her illness.

Tien-Yi Lee’s work has been published in TriQuarterly, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and American Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2012, she was awarded an Artist’s Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.