Lauren Oyler

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.

Fake Accounts

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/04/03/a-sense-of-agency-a-conversation-with-lauren-oyler/

alexi gunner

Whenever I overheard a native English speaker — the Weserstraße was almost entirely Anglophone in the evenings — it was unbearably distracting. It was like everyone was having caricatures of conversation

Meg Konieczny

THE SHY READER IS YELLING, "I DON'T FIND MYSELF FASCINAT-ing!" If you don't find yourself fascinating, then what are you so protective of? And why are you yelling? You just can't win. 

Allison Dempsey

An interesting premise but ultimately barely addressed the advertised topic. Excessively navel-gazing and myopic while also being simultaneously long-winded and abrupt.

A wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity, authenticity and the self in the age of the internet, fakery and illusion

A struggle to finish. I found the writing style impossible to engage with, and the narrator was completely unlikeable to the point i stopped wanting to read her psychpathic inner monologue. 

Amy Keast

Katie Chua

Listen to me!! This book was SO annoying. Lauren Oyler is a critic. She knows she needs to step up her game if she's gonna get away with writing a novel. This novel was so self-reflexive to the point of annoyance. The narrator is a psychopath but written so well that I couldn't help but find myself thinking like her and overanalyzing everything I was doing periods after reading the book. 

 (view spoiler)[ But the ending, my friends, like Uncut Gems, makes the entire work nothing short of genius. Like Uncut Gems, I pretty much despised the experience the entire way through until the twist ending, and when it happened, I was like WHAT THE FUCK THAT IS SO SMART AND SO GOOD. (hide spoiler)]

I probably won't stop talking about this book to people, I'll probably recommend it to most, I am still in shock at it all.

Caridee Huang

Lauren Oyler is way too smart and I think that offends people😂

Cindy Lieberman

“Spending three hours on Twitter does not feel like three hours. That’s the danger and the appeal.”
- Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler

Artful skewering of social media aside, this book is a bit of a disaster. Messy and incoherent. Or perhaps it’s the lack of plot and my lack of empathy for the narrator. Some interesting bits about online dating, writing for an online media company, the initial early protest in DC after 45’s election, living in a foreign country and not speaking the language. In the end, a 
serial liar takes offense when someone lies to her. Why should I care? I don’t.

Brigid Hogan

Messy, petty, too online — I loved it and am uncomfortable about what that means about me

Lauren Attaway

I think I despised the nameless narrator so much I hate-read the majority of this book, which really felt like sort of the point.

Marlee Stark

This one is definitely not for everyone. I did, however, find it subversive, smart, and well-written in the sense that I loathed and liked the narrator in equal measure throughout. I can see readers losing interest as the prose spins out and fractures narratively, but these were the best bits to me—and part of the point.

A wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity, authenticity and the self in the age of the internet A Bookseller Editor’s Choice

A caustic look at millenials in NY and Berlin. Smart and funny. Nails social media addiction, bullshit internet ‘content’ manufacturing, hipster dogma, the vagaries of being a fresh anglo-expat in Berlin. 

Celine Nguyen ✿

Inadequately entertaining, even though I’m a devoted fan of Lauren Oyler’s criticism. When she writes a book review she’s energetic, unflagging, perceptive. The novel, unfortunately, felt exhausting in its self-scrutiny and the narrator’s constant, compulsive self-supervision. Some very very funny observations (on the mythology of Berlin; the social usefulness of astrology, separate from belief; the cool self-absorption of online dating) but the novel felt saturated with Online-ness in a kind of tedious way. 

All my friends have read The Idiot and Jenny Offill’s Weather; we’re all hunched over our screens doing deep-dives on anonymous Twitter personalities; we’re all faintly embarrassed to be ‘into podcasts’, etc. The world of the narrator didn’t feel like anything I didn’t have access to already. It feels too saturated in the moment, too immured in examining and attacking contemporary clichés, an ambient critique of Online Culture in the last 5 years.

There are stylish phrases and stylish moments; the plot feels belaboured; the twist at the end feels expected. I’m genuinely sad about this, because (like I said) I do love Oyler’s writing!!!

(Also: while I liked Lauren Oyler’s critical review of Jenny Offill’s Weather, the extended attack on it in Fake Accounts felt…unnecessary. I ultimately liked Weather more as an ‘internet novel’.)

Jales

Zoe Smolen

Unlikable characters. Failed attempt at satire. Reads like how Boomers think millennials act. Reeks of privilege and Karenisms. Saw the “twist” coming in the first chapter. Sad I bought it.

Gareth Kay

Quite simply the best book I’ve read in a while. It zeroes in on some of the big questions of scrolling culture and the differences between what we do online and IRL. It’s funny, thought provoking and brilliantly written.

Navya R

Fatin Allen

Claudia Gulbransen-Diaz

Maisie MacDonald

Helen Bright

Colton Ray

carissa r

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE "An invigorating work, deadly precise in its skewering of people, places and things . . . Stylish, despairing and very funny, Fake Accounts . . . adroitly maps the dwindling gap between the individual and the world." —Katie Kitamura, The New York Times Book Review A woman in a tailspin discovers that her boyfriend is an anonymous online conspiracy theorist in this “absolutely brilliant take on the bizarre and despicable ways the internet has warped our perception of reality” (Elle, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year). 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.

Fake Accounts

Reviews

Highlights