Vagablonde
-
-
4.0 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Vagablonde is a darkly humorous, rollercoaster ride through the Los Angeles music scene about a woman who wants two things, the first is to live without psychotropic medication, and the second is to experience success as an artist. A cautionary tale about viral fame, Vagablonde speaks directly to our time in biting detail.
Prue Van Teesen is thriving. That is, her life looks good on paper. She has an easy government job, a nice girlfriend, and a budding music career. When Prue is introduced to producer Jax Jameson, they instantly click. Prue soon joins Jax in his “Kingdom,” a collective of musicians and artists who share Prue’s aesthetic sensibilities and lust for escapism. Soon, she's off her meds, closing her law practice, and becoming entangled with a suspect crew of heavy drug users. But the group they form, Shiny AF, is starting to take off and Prue is on the precipice of getting everything she thought she wanted. So, why is she still so miserable?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dorn's fresh, startling debut tracks the quick rise to fame of a restless L.A. rap artist. Prue Van Teesen, a 30-year-old lawyer and bedroom lyricist, believes the antidepressants she's taking are cramping her style. "Rap and the law aren't as different as you'd think," she considers silently after sharing her ambitions with her psychiatrist. "They're both adversarial." When she meets a music producer named Jax and joins his "Kingdom" of singers and hangers-on, she's encouraged to share her talent. Self-medicating with Adderall, cocaine, and alcohol, Prue collaborates with Jax's crew to produce some exciting material as the group Shiny AF. Jax leads her through an exhausting series of parties that raise her profile on social media, adding to the endorphin rush of her drug cocktail. In the moment, Prue often loses sight of where she is or who she's been with, and when one of her law clients joins Shiny AF, she hasn't the fortitude to separate her professional life from her rising "Edgy Internet Persona" on Soundcloud. It comes as no surprise that as success looms, things veer out of control, but Dorn is most successful when she charts Prue's interior life, which knows there's more to life than likes ("I want to watch a movie that doesn't exist"). Dorn's voice slices like a serrated knife through a wacked-out world of contemporary music culture, where glittery dreams go viral and die.
Customer Reviews
Already re-reading :)
Loved this book, was hard for me to put down. The details set the stage / aesthetic for the story in a way that drew me in and added to the unique appeal of this novel, but never got in the way of the plot. I even found myself playing specific tracks received in the book in the days following. Prue is a fascinating antihero, and you’re pulled into her downward spiral without feeling like she was staged to be especially relatable or sympathic- which somehow makes the story even more compelling. If it’s anything like vagablonde, I will be on the lookout for more fiction from Anna Dorn!