Fake Accounts
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- 6,49 €
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- 6,49 €
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE
A wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity, authenticity and the self in the age of the internet
‘I loved it’ Zadie Smith
‘Brilliant, very funny’ Guardian
‘Prepare to feel very seen’ I-D
On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend’s phone and makes a startling discovery: he’s an anonymous Internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in Internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she’s not exactly shocked by the revelation. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies.
Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York – or be anywhere in particular – she flees to Berlin, and embarks on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, from dating apps to expat social events, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms.
Narrated in a voice as seductive as it is subtly subversive, Fake Accounts is a wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity and authenticity in the age of the internet.
Reviews
‘This novel made me want to retire from contemporary reality. I loved it’ Zadie Smith
‘Compulsively readable’ Irish Times
‘A sharply observed and wryly funny satire on the banal sociopathy of online life’ Sunday Times
A furiously vivid account of living online and an exploration of the fake and real versions of ourselves we slip between.’ ESQUIRE
‘Terrific…provides much food for thought .’ Birmingham Mail
Fake Accounts questions who we are in real life and who we pretend to be online… Prepare to feel very seen.’
i-D
‘A probing examination of identity and authenticity in the online age, and the lies we like to tell ourselves’
ANOTHER
‘Social media has lurked in the background of contemporary literary fiction … but here it feels finally, fully and thoroughly explored, with style and originality. I felt sharpened by it, grateful for its provocations …’ New York Times
'A searingly funny, smart, revealing novel. Oyler's fiction is as insightful and probing as her criticism' Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time
‘[A] unique, ferociously modern voice. This incisive, funny work brilliantly captures the claustrophobia of lives led online and personally tested in the real world’ Publishers Weekly
‘Fake Accounts percolates the big moral questions of our age – fraudulence, identity as performance, surveillance capitalism, political instability, personal freedom – through a narrative arc driven ingeniously by low-level dopamine hits. At the same time, it is very, very funny. Oyler is the kind of dangerous contemporary writer we need more of’ Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy and winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2020
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
