Dubbed a 2018 Debut Writer to Watch by Publisher’s Weekly
Nudes on Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 and an SPD Best Seller
Through diaristic ellipses, Nash crafts an origin story of obsessional masochism.
Drawing on the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and grappling with an eating disorder, indie cult author Elle Nash paints a realistic and poignant portrait of a teenager’s quest for self-identification on both sides of the computer screen. Using Livejournal entries, we meet our protagonist, in her messy transition into adulthood in the midst of grappling with calorie counts, boys, and being honest with who she is only online. Following up her cult fiction debut Animals Eat Each Other, Nash shows she belongs in the same camp along with exciting feminist literary disrupters the likes of Melissa Broder and Alissa Nutting.
It’s 2005. Lucy shambles through the last weeks of her senior year of high school, jonesing for a thinner body, desperate to connect with another human. Who is reflected back at her when she is sleeping with someone, when she is puking into the toilet bowl? Who is reflected back when she’s alone? Only the internet knows, where she muses on the concept of her “self” through her Livejournal, with a cadre of online friends who are definitely NOT pro-anorexic. Everyone's sick here, but at least they understand.
“Elle Nash has always been good at mapping the particulars of unspoken desire.”
—Lit Hub
“Relentlessly, whether the scene is a suburban home or an urban sex club, the aura of existential threat is borne.” —Entropy Magazine
“Nash has modeled a portrayal of people operating on fringes of society.” —Publishers Weekly
