The Bored and the Beautiful

A downtown 'it' girl falls for an influential journalist who pushes her addiction issues with love, pills and headlines – to the breaking point, in the intoxicating and propulsive first novel from the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir How to Murder Your Life.

Meet Dizzy Calatrava: blonde, brilliant and perpetually one cigarette away from collapse. It’s 2012 and she’s a downtown writer with a tabloid presence, a narcotics habit and a tendency to treat New York City like her own private paradise. Unreliable yet unforgettable, Dizzy pops amphetamine pills like Tic Tacs, drifting between Thai rehabs and rooftop afterparties like a sorceress in platforms, narrating the apocalypse of her thirties in prose so sparkling you can feel it burn your nose.

When Dizzy meets Editor-In-Chief, a charming, fellow media personality whose bad behavior only helps his star rise, she wonders if perhaps she’s met her true match. But is this a tale of two kindred flames igniting, or is Dizzy flying too close to the sun? The Bored and the Beautiful is a dark, feminine and salacious glimpse into the mind of a lovable protagonist who you can’t help but root for as she makes every mistake you can imagine – and probably some you can’t.

Reviews

Praise for How to Murder Your Life:

'Marnell recounts parties and drugs and sex in writing that mirrors the experience of being on drugs – sometimes fizzing … and, just as often, cold and blunt and brutal' Guardian

'Marnell is a great storyteller. Funny, with the clever hustler’s knack for an energetically spun tall tale, she has an upbeat tone that hardly falters, even when she recounts the most harrowing episodes of her life' New Yorker

'[Marnell's] memoir brims with all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer's true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions and identity' Harper's Bazaar