Evil Genius
A Novel
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- Vorbestellbar
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- Erwartet am 17. Feb. 2026
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- 19,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
An exuberant, brutally hilarious novel about a young woman’s insatiable quest to carve her own path—even if she needs to step over a few dead bodies along the way
It’s 1974 and San Francisco is full of mystery and menace. Nineteen-year-old Celia Dent keeps telling herself how lucky she is to be working at the phone company and to be married to her Drew, a man who says he loves her. Celia’s contentment with her little life is shattered, though, when a woman she knows from work is murdered in a love tryst gone awry. What would that be like, Celia wonders, to die for love—or to kill for love? What would it be like to live each moment passionately and with full awareness that each breath is bringing her closer to her last?
Before Celia knows it, her musings about love-and-death happenings are bleeding into daily life. Suddenly she’s playing hooky from work and searching for a love tryst of her very own. She’s practicing her marksmanship at a local gun range and thinking about how good it would feel to bury something sharp inside her domineering husband’s ear. It’s all pretend, though, until the night comes when Celia finally goes too far, and she and Drew are set on a deadly collision course.
Exhilarating, surreal, and bitingly clever, Evil Genius is a comic noir exploring obsession and desire—and what happens when a sweetly seditious young woman dares to imagine a better life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oshetsky's potent latest (after Poor Deer) dives into the volatile inner world of a young woman who fantasizes about a life beyond her abusive marriage. Celia Dent, 19, works as a billing operator for the phone company in 1970s San Francisco. Each night, she takes the train home to Redwood City and her controlling husband, Drew, a surgical technician 11 years her senior. Their marriage was brokered by Celia's mother, who's since died. When a grisly workplace scandal—an adulterous affair that ends in a murder—ripples through the phone company, Celia becomes enthralled by the mix of danger and desire. She begins to crave "revolutionary changes" in her life, "violent changes, even," and she imagines attacking Drew with her mother's old nail file, burying it "deep inside ear." She takes increasingly bold steps toward fulfilling her homicidal and sexual fantasies, from buying a knife in a pawn shop and accepting a ride home from an attractive train passenger to arranging an assignation with a frequent caller at the phone company. Celia's mounting frenzy is rendered in razor-sharp prose, and Oshetsky blends noir sensibilities with their signature surrealism, effortlessly slipping between dark humor and unnerving sensuality. The result is thrilling.
