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Published Feb 2021
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A woman in a post-election tailspin discovers that her boyfriend is an anonymous online conspiracy theorist in this provocative and subversive debut novel that examines social media, sex, feminism, and fiction, the connection they've all promised, and the lies they help us tell.
On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she's not exactly shocked by the revelation. Actually, she's relieved--he was always a little distant--and she plots to end their floundering relationship while on a trip to the Women's March in DC. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies.
Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York and increasingly alienated from her friends and colleagues, our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, from dating apps to expat meetups, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms. She begins to think she can't trust anyone--shouldn't the feeling be mutual?
Narrated with seductive confidence and subversive wit, Fake Accounts challenges the way current conversations about the self and community, delusions and gaslighting, and fiction and reality play out in the internet age.
"[B]old...Oyler experiments with various forms...creating a unique, ferociously modern voice. This incisive, funny work brilliantly captures the claustrophobia of lives led online and personae tested in the real world." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Prolific essayist Oyler's first foray into fiction seduces with its mesmerizing stream-of-consciousness... [her] piercing examination of the paradoxically immersive superficiality of life lived in the thrall of social media is hefty in its own right, a case of both too much information and, ironically, not enough. Sure to resonate with the multitasking Millennials and Gen Z digerati." - Booklist (starred review)
"A mordant take on postmodern mores...[A] smart, often funny critique of a culture that rewards people for turning themselves into brands and encourages the incessant consumption and creation of content...Not bad as social commentary. Not that great as a story." - Kirkus Reviews
"An absorbing, intelligent, charmingly meta novel about what it's like to live right now, both on and off the internet." – Literary Hub,
"This novel made me want to retire from contemporary reality. I loved it." - Zadie Smith
"Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts is such an ensorcelling blend of insight, comedy and suspense, you almost don't notice yourself being filleted alive in these pages. A note to fellow readers of the twenty-first century: Anyone familiar with the allure of social media will adore this coolly observed novel. A note to fellow writers of the twenty-first century: Oh crap, she did it." - Sloane Crosley, author of Look Alive Out There and I Was Told There'd Be Cake
"Fake Accounts is an absorbing and shameless examination of the way self-mythologies are forged and performed in the public privacy of the internet. Fans of Lauren Oyler's divisive, ferocious criticism will love this 21st century comedy of bad manners." - Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody is Ever Missing and The Answers
This information about Fake Accounts 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.
Lauren Oyler's essays on books and culture have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, London Review of Books, the Guardian, New York magazine's The Cut, the New Republic, Bookforum, and elsewhere. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now divides her time between New York and Berlin.
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