A smart, savage and hilarious debut exploring love, sexuality, purpose - and the delicious absurdities of online life
Elsa is struggling. Her formative, exhilarating relationship - with an older couple - has abruptly ended, leaving her depressed and directionless in her childhood bedroom. In the relationship's wake, Elsa scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning.
Faithfully, her screen provides a new obsession: a charismatic young actor whose latest feature is a gay love story that illuminates Elsa's crisis. And then, as if she had conjured him, the actor arrives in her hometown, with an entourage of fellow actors, writers, and directors, for the annual theatre festival. When she is hired at the one upscale restaurant in town, Elsa finds herself thrown into in contact with the actor and his circle.
But her obsession shifts from the actor to his frequent dinner companion - an alluring, androgynous person called Sam. As this confusing connection develops, Elsa is forced to grapple with her sexuality, the uncomfortable truths about the end of her last relationship, and the patterns that may be playing out once again.
Unflinchingly sharp and funny,
Misrecognition is an unforgettable debut novel about the internet, post-postmodern adulthood and queer identity.
A smart, savage and hilarious debut exploring love, sexuality, purpose - and the delicious absurdities of online life
Elsa is struggling. The relationship that defined her twenties is over, leaving her licking her wounds in her childhood bedroom and waitressing at her small town's only restaurant. While her parents tiptoe around her barbed angst, Elsa finds her sole distraction from heartbreak onscreen.
Soon she is absorbing hours of content almost indiscriminately, from a tidying expert who extols the virtues of getting rid of one's baggage to vloggers who temporarily convince her of the life-changing power of watermelon brightening serum. And then there is the preternaturally charismatic young actor whose performance in his latest acclaimed feature seems to embody the very essence of her own anguish.
When the actor turns up in Elsa's town, performing in a buzzy local play, Elsa's virtual and actual realities collide. But as she vies to infiltrate the young man's circle, she finds a new and very real connection forming with an unexpected person in his circle - a connection that forces her to contemplate her own identity and desires.
