Fan Club
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“Mayer lays bare the terrible destiny of a society obsessed with social media stalking and celebrity relationships.” —Julia Heaberlin, bestselling author of We Are All the Same in the Dark
In this raucous psychological thriller, a disillusioned millennial joins a cliquey fan club, only to discover that the group is bound together by something darker than devotion
Day after day our narrator searches for meaning beyond her vacuous job at a women's lifestyle website—entering text into a computer system while she watches their beauty editor unwrap box after box of perfectly packaged bits of happiness. Then, one night at a dive bar, she hears a message in the newest single by international pop star Adriana Argento, and she is struck. Soon she loses herself to the online fandom, a community whose members feverishly track Adriana's every move.
When a colleague notices her obsession, she’s invited to join an enigmatic group of adult Adriana superfans who call themselves the Ivies and worship her music in witchy candlelit listening parties. As the narrator becomes more entrenched in the group, she gets closer to uncovering the sinister secrets that bind them together—while simultaneously losing her grip on reality.
With caustic wit and hypnotic writing, this unsparingly critical thrill ride through millennial life examines all that is wrong in our celebrity-obsessed internet age, and how easy it is to lose yourself in it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The narrator of Mayer's rambling debut, an unnamed 24-year-old Brooklyn woman, tries to escape the monotony of her job as a web producer for a women's lifestyle website when her coworkers invite her to happy hour. As she dances at the bar, she recognizes the song playing is by famed pop star Adriana Argento and is immediately hooked. A newly hired coworker notices the narrator's obsession with Adriana and invites her to join the Ivies, a group of women superfans who idolize the singer. Clearly not a normal fan club, the Ivies partake in cultlike rituals while listening to Adriana's music. As the narrator spends more time with the Ivies, she sacrifices her healthy relationships with other friends, leading readers to wonder why she hangs out with such nutty people. The narrator's discovery of a disturbing secret that ties the Ivies to a murder that took place at one of Adriana's concerts raises the stakes as the action builds to an unsatisfyingly ambiguous conclusion. The narrator's long-winded innermost thoughts don't help. Hopefully, Mayer will do better next time.
