Review by Booklist Review
On vacation in Berlin, a writer for a New York-based website falls for Felix, a fellow ex-pat slumming as a tour guide. Felix follows the unnamed narrator back to the states, where their romance quickly dwindles on her part after she snoops through his phone and discovers that he has a shadow identity as a conspiracy theorist in the dawning Age of Trump. Just as she's convinced herself to break up with him, she learns that Felix has died in a biking accident. In a dubious attempt to reconcile her conflicted grief, she quits her job and moves back to Berlin. As a not-quite stranger in a strange land, her quest for freedom and clarity plays out through the counterintuitive practice of spinning lies and creating false personae. Prolific essayist and blogger Oyler's first foray into fiction seduces with its mesmerizing stream-of-consciousness and exploration of identity and authenticity, commitment and abandonment. Though not attaining the volume of cultural minutiae displayed in Lucy Ellman's gargantuan Ducks, Newburyport (2019), Oyler's similarly 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.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Oyler's bold debut, a blogger discovers her boyfriend is an influential online conspiracy theorist. A suspicion that the unnamed narrator's withdrawn boyfriend, Felix, might be cheating leads her to find his anonymous social media accounts, which stoke alt-right sentiments as Donald Trump's inauguration looms. The narrative flashes back to show the couple's meet-cute in Berlin--he's a tour guide, she's a tourist--and their burgeoning long-distance relationship, which changes for the worse after he joins her in New York. Felix is a habitual liar, prone to inventing alter egos for himself and the narrator when meeting strangers, and initially she plays along, but soon longs for the real Felix. She resolves to break up with him, but first she travels to the Women's March in Washington, D.C., where she gets a phone call informing her Felix has died in a bike accident. Feeling adrift, she quits her job and moves to Berlin, where she leans into a lying life of her own--with the men she meets on dating apps, the mother of twins whom she nannies, even the German government. Oyler experiments with various forms along the way: there is a lengthy parody of fragmented novels, copious analysis of millennial internet habits, literary references from Dickens to Ashbery to Ben Lerner, a Greek chorus of ex-boyfriends, and direct address to the reader. Oyler wields all these devices freely, 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. Agent: Alia Habib, the Gernert Company. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A mordant take on postmodern mores. Late one night, while her boyfriend sleeps, an unnamed protagonist goes snooping through his phone. She finds no evidence that Felix has been cheating on her, but she didn't really suspect he was, and she wouldn't have cared much if he had been. Indeed, most of what she finds is utterly anodyne--until she discovers his anonymous Instagram account. Scrolling through screen after screen of conspiracy-theory memes, she discovers that Felix has instantly become a mystery to her. She also realizes that she should definitely dump him, which she'd been thinking about doing anyway. While she's considering the most satisfying way to do this, circumstances rob her of the opportunity and send her into a bit of an existential crisis. This results in her quitting her job as a blogger and moving from Manhattan to Berlin. One way to describe this book is as 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--and it is that. But it's also a novel in which the reader is stuck inside the head of one very self-absorbed woman carefully analyzing the minutiae of weeks spent endlessly crafting new personae for dating apps and trying them out on the men who respond. One's ability to appreciate this novel will depend entirely on one's interest in spending a whole lot of time with its narrator. Her sharpness and seeming self-awareness are engaging at first. After explaining that she finds it unappealing to abandon all reason upon falling in love, she adds, "I believe it hurts the feminist cause. And, worse, makes me look personally bad." Eventually, though, it becomes clear that her self-awareness doesn't make her honest; it just makes her better at presenting a curated version of herself. Not bad as social commentary. Not that great as a story. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
