Note to Self
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A witty, keenly observant look at our Internet-obsessed culture
Anna Krestler is adrift. The Internet has draped itself, kudzu-like, over her brain, which makes it even more difficult to confront the question of what to do when she is dismissed from her job as a cubicle serf at a midtown law firm. Despite the exhortations of Leslie, her friend and volunteer life coach, Anna seeks refuge in the back alleys of craigslist, where she connects with Taj, an adherent of a nebulous movement known as Nowism that occupies the most self-absorbed fringes of the art world.
Art, Anna decides, is what will provide the meaningful life she's been searching for and knows she deserves. She joins Taj's "crew" and is drawn into his grand experimental film project. But making art is hard and microwaving pouch foods is easy. Soon enough Anna finds herself distracted by myriad other quests: remembering to ask Leslie "How are you?," reducing her intake of caloric drinks, and parrying her mother's insistence that she attend hairdressing school.
But when Anna's twenty-seven-year-old roommate—a perpetual intern named Brie—announces her pregnancy, it forces Anna to confront reality, setting off a chain of events that lead to a horrifying climax of betrayal.
Alina Simone's Note to Self is a shrewdly perceptive, hilarious, moving tale about friendship, art, and the search for a meaningful life in an era of rampant narcissism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her debut novel, singer and essayist Simone tackles our hyperlinked culture in all its short-attention-spanned, privacy-deprived, cult-of-celebrity glory. After getting downsized out of her cubicle in a New York City law firm, 37-year-old Anna Kestler finds herself adrift. She can't relate to her younger roommate, who interns around town and parties with a cool crowd. When not dreading her weekly meetings with a longtime friend, she obsesses over spam and wastes time surfing the Web. She fails to follow through on her grand ideas; even the camcorder she buys to make a documentary sits in its box beyond the return date. Through a Craigslist ad, she becomes an unpaid production assistant for a microbudget filmmaker and devotee of Nowism whose new project documents people's failed aspirations. His assignments blur the line between virtual and real life even as he promises to help her beat her Internet addiction. Simone (You Must Go and Win) skewers the self-absorbed world in which Anna is caught up with incisive writing and her observations are often so clever they deserve reading aloud. The d nouement stuns more than it should, but by then readers will be standing in Anna's shoes.