Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2018
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
A dark, propulsive and addictive debut thriller, splashed with all the glitz and glitter of New York City.
They go through both bottles of champagne right there on the High Line, with nothing but the stars over them... They drink and Lavinia tells Louise about all the places they will go together, when they finish their stories, when they are both great writers - to Paris and to Rome and to Trieste...
Lavinia will never go. She is going to die soon.
Louise has nothing. Lavinia has everything. After a chance encounter, the two spiral into an intimate, intense, and possibly toxic friendship. A Talented Mr. Ripley for the digital age, this seductive story takes a classic tale of obsession and makes it irresistibly new.
"Starred Review. This devious, satisfying novel perfectly captures a very narrow slice of the Manhattan demimonde." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. At once a thrilling and provocative crime novel, a devastating exploration of female insecurity, and a scathing indictment of society's obsession with social media." - Kirkus
"This fast-paced, stylish, dialogue- and character-driven debut from journalist and scholar Burton will definitively ensnare readers. Diabolically playing on what we think we know about others and what we reveal about ourselves in the social -media age, it will give readers the creeps, too." - Booklist
"When the shocking plot twist arrives, readers will be glued to this contemporary take on Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. Highly recommended." - Library Journal
"Social Creature is a millennial update to Ripley, in a digital world where identity is even more porous and easily hijacked, and the fun of watching selves be invented is matched by the nastiness with which they are destroyed." - Caite Dolan-Leach, author of Dead Letters
"I read Social Creature in one breathless rush. It's a wild nightmarish ride through a New York City of decadence and broken dreams, faking it and f*cking up, love and lies and more lies. This is the missing link between Bret Easton Ellis and The Secret History." - Emma Flint, author of Bailey Prize longlisted Little Deaths
"Devious and decadent. I couldn't put it down." - Courtney Maum, author of Touch and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
"Glittering, breathless, and precise - Social Creature fearlessly explores identity in the modern world through a dangerous and magnetic friendship. Tara Isabella Burton's prose is electrifying, her characters dazzlingly bright. This novel will consume you." - Danya Kukafka, bestselling author of Girl in Snow
"A mesmerizing and beautifully lyrical debut about sexuality, identity, envy, confusion, and the creepy ways in which we swallow one another in attempt to become ourselves. - Swan Huntley, author of The Goddesses and We Could Be Beautiful
"A compulsively readable, razor sharp novel for the social media age. Edith Wharton meets Patricia Highsmith." - Carol Goodman, bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages and The Widow's House
"Unflinching, cool, brutal. This book will make you its accomplice. You'll go willingly." - Georgia Clark, author of The Regulars
This information about Social Creature was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tara Isabella Burton is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Winner of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for Travel Writing, she completed her doctorate in 19th century French literature and theology at the University of Oxford and is a prodigious travel writer, short story writer and essayist for National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist's 1843 and more. She currently works for Vox as their Religion Correspondent, lives in New York, and divides her time between the Upper East Side and Tbilisi, Georgia.
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