Anna DornRezensionen

The Publisher Says: A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.

Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student who smells like metallic orchids and is researching 1950s lesbian pulp, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.

Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy.

When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes—and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events.

Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet- and celebrity-obsessed world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you read Highsmith's Carol (aka The Price of Salt)? This has that particular kind of "Questa o Quella?" Rigoletto-but-sapphic-romance aura. And, follow-up concept, are you aware that Highsmith was a cruel, nasty piece of work? This has that same mean-creative story aura.

Having now hooked a few, driven a few off, and confused most, let's talk about lesbians. I'm the gay brother of a spiky, difficult lesbian. (She said so before I did! But, to be scrupulously fair, our entire family is/was spiky and difficult.) Astrid's 'tude is nowhere near as unkind as the reviews led me to believe it would be, by my own family's standards. What she is, that seems to surprise and unnerve the people around her in the story, is what I think interesting people usually are: Opinionated. I note without pleasure that opinionated women get miles of stick from persons of all genders and orientations. Just ask Hillary Clinton if you doubt me. It shows also in the readers' reviews I've seen around and about. Lots of people, even the ones who liked the story fine, commented on how abrasive Astrid was. Well, yeah. She's smarter than a solid 95% of the people around her. She's in a highly stressed passage in her life. She's abrasive because she's rubbed raw by her life.

Her happy place is perfume. Think about what that means. She collects something that is designed to hide and to enhance a person's most intimate quality, their smell. She doesn't even collect the stuff itself! She collects the containers...the carefully designed vessels that seduce the eyes but in and of themselves provide nothing but a space to be filled! The capitalist/consumer seductions carefully designed to increase your (largely female, as these are perfume bottles) cultural anxiety about your fundamental attractor or repeller of intimacy, smell!

This Anna Dorn, she knows her onions. Show me, please, another author whose depth of character development includes these intense sociopolitical shades whose prose isn't clunking, juddering, jelly-like didacticism. Author Dorn's got little enough competition in the witty-banter segment. She's sui generis in the segment of the Venn diagram where that overlaps anti-capitalist/feminist discourse.

Happily so. I'm glad Simon & Schuster offered me this DRC because, old gay man that I am, I hadn't heard of Author Dorn before. Now it's me for Vagablonde.

I see a few raised eyebrows contemplating an expected fifth star, after that gush. I wanted to put a fifth star on, I promise! I couldn't because Astrid being wishy-washy about Ivy-vs-Penelope was overplayed. I think will-they-won't-they is an easy trope to allow to outstay its actual usefulness. My perception is that this is what happened here. I'm also a wee bit wary of things like cancel culture/getting canceled being enshrined in stories that say bigger, more trenchant things about inclusion and cultural norms. It feels more like an add-on to use Astrid's canceling for her unguarded comments than an actual feature of the entire conversation the rest of the story is having about the greater issues abovementioned.

So okay, I didn't find myself sitting slackjawed, wondering how this author faceted this sparkling thousand-carat diamond. (That experience is what I call six-stars-of-five storytelling.) But make no mistake, this wordsmith will be on my readar as I wait for her to do just that.

It seems very likely to happen.

adult fiction - two astrology-obsessed women circle each other as their lives get messy in Riverside CA. Dawn has spectacular anger issues and keeps running into drama with her numerous ex-girlfriends; Emily is a funny misanthrope who relies on astrology memes and listicles to pay her rent. When their worlds collide it is an absolute trainwreck, but one that they can hopefully laugh about later.½

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher (Hachette Books) in exchange for an honest review.

What a wild ride!

I’m just about to graduate law school so I thought it was the perfect time to read this book.

Even though the author is a white woman from a privileged background and I am an Asian American woman, I still related to her and her experiences becoming disenchanted by the law. I agree with a lot of her issues with the legal profession and system. She went into criminal law, a field I have no interest in, but I am not surprised by her experiences or her realizations. The legal system is incredibly archaic and it can be frustrating because of that.

Even law school itself makes no sense sometimes. She writes in relation to summer jobs, “representatives from all the top law firms in the country came…and interviewed students for their 2Ls summer jobs, which are said to determine the rest of our legal careers. Why? I have no idea. It was just something we all knew and all accepted” (pg. 83). That is a true statement and just highlights how cookie cutter becoming a lawyer can be.

I loved how the author explained everything so simply. For example, she explains all the basics of law school in such uncomplicated language. She really provided an in-depth overview of all things law school. She even mentions bar review which was something I was super confused about when I first started law school (I naively thought it was when 3Ls studied for the bar exam, but it’s actually when law students go out to a bar for drinks).

If the author needs an idea for another book, she should totally do a “Law School For Dummies” type of book. Her writing style is so accessible (unlike most law books) so even the lay person can understand what she’s saying. This probably stems from her inability to master the Bluebook (another archaic legal gatekeeping tool or as she puts it, “The cursed Bluebook is filled with ways to make the law inaccessible to non lawyers. That’s what the law is all about— making what should be accessible esoteric to keep lawyer salaries high” (pg. 66)).

I did feel that the book lost a bit of its steam towards the end. It felt a little lost, like the author didn’t quite know how to end the book. Because of that, the last few chapters were disjointed from the first half of the book. The last chapters dealt with how messed up the criminal justice system is and I felt that those chapters could have been a jumping off point for a whole other book.

Overall, I really enjoyed this memoir on the realities of being lawyer. I really recommend this if you are interested in becoming a lawyer. Not everything she says may apply to you, but it does give honest insight into the profession.