Natasha Stagg

A bored twenty-three-year-old woman suddenly leaves her dull suburban job for L.A., becomes Internet-famous, and falls in love -- Zelda to a semi-famous Scott.

A Novel

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Lindy

My opinion of this book changed every twenty pages. If nothing else, it is very smartly written, not so much in what it says, but in what is left unsaid between the lines. 

So it's set in the American southwest in 2011 and that's important because in 2011 there are no non-minimum wage jobs for recent college graduates, the word 'hipster' has just lost all meaning, and the term 'social media influencer' has just started being something people aspire to. The plot is that a young woman attempts to navigate this. 

Often I read an article, or watch a video, or see references to, about some Drama (TM) that's happening between internet celebrities, and after reading the article or watching the video, I know all about their drama but I'm typically left with three burning questions: Who tf are these people? What do they do/why are they famous? And who tf are their legions of fans? It's also bizarre in that everyone assumes the consumer of the article/video/whatever already knows the life history, biases, and general unreliability of everyone involved. Through short (blog post-esque?) chapters, lies by omission, and shifting timelines Surveys conveys the strangeness of this. In other words, the narrator might be shallow but the text is rather complex.

Surveys A Novel

Reviews