I am a novelist with my debut, The One, out in April 2023. I’m interested in stories about the role of gender, technology, and privacy in our contemporary culture.We spend so many hours at work, yet often the literature we read spends so little time discussing what that experience is actually like. As I wrote my own novel with a narrator flailing so aimlessly through her early post-grad years that she ends up on a reality dating show, I craved other books that tackled what it was like to have to earn a living at the forefront of the text, rather than a nebulous character detail in the background.
Emily didn't join the cast ofThe One,a reality dating show, for fame or for a relationship. She simply didn't have anything better to do. Emily has been performing her entire life—for her family and friends, former boyfriends, and coworkers. How different could it be playing herself in front of cameras? As Emily's fascination with another contestant grows, both Emily and her producer, Miranda, are forced to decide what it is they really want—and what they are willing to do to get it.
A brilliant send-up of our cultural mythology around romance, The One examines the reality of love and desire set against a world of ultimate artifice and manipulation.
Exalted follows two women, Emily, an Internet astrologer, and Dawn, a lesbian waitress looking for a connection of any sort.
Dorn’s writing is sharp and funny as she tracks the way that both women are forced to scrape together a living. I love to see a character at work, and Emily’s wry sense of humor as she manipulates viral trends and conjures somewhat bogus readings is a powerful engine for the story.
As the novel progresses, the main characters’ lives begin to overlap, and you begin to wonder whether some destinies are really written in the stars as any good astrologer would insist.
"A brutally funny and observant ride through astrology culture, love, and self-discovery." —NYLON's Most Anticipated Books of 2022
"A depressed Millennial astrologist, a self-hating lesbian with a rage (and drinking) problem, and profound questions of connection and destiny make Exalted an unforgettable read. Clear your schedule and consult your horoscope because Anna Dorn's novel will make you cackle and gasp, and you won't be able to put it down." —Edan Lepucki
Emily Forrest runs Exalted, the hottest astrology account on Instagram, from her studio apartment in Los Angeles. Burned out on meme-making and listicles, Emily’s passion for astrology is waning…
Isa, the narrator of Happy Hour, and her best friend Gala are recent transplants for New York City, undocumented, and working whatever under-the-table job they can find to make next month’s rent while balancing their main pastime: socializing.
Granados is an expert at portraying how young women find and wield whatever power they can access, whether through their beauty, their sense of humor, or the clear-eyed vision of the social machinations around them.
With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados's stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that's hardly going to stop them…
Leichter, in Temporary, pushes working in the gig economy to the extreme as the narrator is placed at increasingly bizarre and demanding temp jobs over the course of the novel.
The book is full of incisive commentary of what working in a state of permanent precarity does to a psyche, while balancing these insights with perfectly absurd satire. My favorite is the narrator’s stint as a barnacle, but there are so many options to choose from.
In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”
This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
Lusterfollows Edie who starts the novel with a publishing job but after being fired, ends up living in a house in the suburbs with the man she is sleeping with, Eric, his wife, and their adopted Black daughter.
Edie’s financial situation is a rightful driver for her choices. We get vivid descriptions of her apartment and the cockroaches that reside there in contrast to the peace of Eric’s family home.
Additionally, Edie is a painter, and Leilani’s deft handling of how to manage being an artist when creative freedom is predicated on the ability to have time and money is one of the smartest elements of the book.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.
At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.
For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting.
Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.
This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written…
Dressed to kill and ready to make rent, best friends Lisa and Jamie work as “paid to party” girls at the Rose City Ripe for Disruption gala, a gathering of Portland's elite.
Their evening is derailed when Lisa stumbles across Ellen, a ruthless politician and Lisa’s estranged mother. And to make matters worse, Lisa’s boyfriend, Patrick, crashes the party to meet his new boss, Portland's food cart drug kingpin. Lisa makes a fateful choice that traps her, Jamie, and Patrick in Ellen’s web. In this gripping thriller, Lisa must reconcile a painful past and perilous present.
Suspected murder, eclectic food trucks, and artisanal cocaine: just another day in Thorn City.
It’s the night of the Rose City Ripe for Disruption gala—a gathering of Portland’s elite. Dressed to kill in sparkling minidresses, best friends Lisa and Jamie attend as “paid to party” girls. They plan an evening of fake flirtations, karaoke playlists, and of course, grazing the catering.
Past and present collide when Lisa stumbles across Ellen, a ruthless politician who also happens to be Lisa’s estranged mother. Awkward . . . When Lisa was sixteen, Ellen had her kidnapped and taken to the Lost Lake Academy—a…
