Alexandra Tanner

This is a very silly and whiny book that still has its charms. Two sisters, Jules and Poppy, are living together in a Brooklyn rathole apartment, working crap jobs, and trying to avoid their hostile mother and dermatologist father, always ready with a needle to smooth out their mid-twenties faces with filler. The sisters have difficult afflictions, like unsightly hives and "female problems", and seem to be on the permanent road to nowhere in their flighty online careers and their lack of supportive friends or purpose for living, except for Jules being the queen of nasty cracks and bon mots. She becomes obsessed with a group of Mormon mommies who flood their Instagrams with tradmom and anti-vax pronouncements. They make her feel better via the "misery-loves-company" mode, as does the acquisition of Amy Klobuchar, a three legged rescue dog who pees incessantly. I found the narrative pointless but amusing, and the non-ending convinces me that this was really a waste of time except for the sparkling splashes of snarkiness.

Quote: "The part of my brain that loves hateful things is aglow."… (mehr)

this was fine. the ending was SUPER unnecessary and i hate the author for it.. BUT hey, Alexandra Tanner, take a bow! your debut has me hooked! i appreciate novels that avoid an attempt at timelessness for the sake of literary merit. this one firmly plants itself in 2019 brooklyn, which works to its advantage. it’s a claustrophobic depiction of adulthood shadowed by the ghost of anxiety on every page. and largely shaped by the internet. it’s a page-turner of jokes, ideas, and witty observations, yet it also creeps under your skin. i need a 2020 'Worry' sequel… (mehr)