Something New Under the Sun

Informationen zum Autor Alexandra Kleeman is the author of Intimations , a short story collection, and the novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine , which was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker , The Paris Review , Zoetrope , Conjunctions , and Guernica , among other publications, and her other writing has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, n+1 , and The Guardian . Her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is the winner of the Berlin Prize and the Bard Fiction Prize, and was a Rome Prize Literature Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She lives in Staten Island and teaches at the New School. Klappentext NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE • A novelist discovers the dark side of Hollywood and reckons with ambition, corruption, and environmental collapse in a darkly satirical reflection of ecological reality ( Time ) LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Vulture, Thrillist, Literary Hub An urgent novel about our very near future, and a deeply addictive pleasure.Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies Novelist Patrick Hamlin has come to Los Angeles to oversee the film adaptation of one of his books and try to impress his wife and daughter back home with this last-ditch attempt at professional success. But California is not as he imagined. Drought, wildfire, and corporate corruption are everywhere, and the company behind a mysterious new brand of synthetic water seems to be at the root of it all. Patrick finds an unlikely partner in Cassidy Carterthe cynical starlet of his filmand the two investigate the sun-scorched city, where they discover the darker side of all that glitters in Hollywood. Something New Under the Sun is an unmissable novel for our present momenta bold exploration of environmental catastrophe in the age of alternative facts, and a ghost story not of the past but of the near future ( The New York Times ). Leseprobe Chapter Two In the photographs posted online, the restaurant is enchanting: shady and cool in a land of so much sunlight and bare, exposed skin. In one photo, a close-up of a whole spatch-cocked quail, grilled with preserved kumquat, is set against a colorful salad of shaved fennel, caraway seeds, and smoked juniper berries. The body of the quail is fragile and precise, like a tropical flower. Small crooked wings and glossy drumsticks encircle a vacated center, where the guts have been extracted with the tender skill of a model-airplane hobbyist. Past the tight-focus food, the background is a murk of charcoal grays and moody blues, indistinctly stylish. In another photo, a gray granite bar slopes a mellow S, bordered on one side by a line of gleaming gold-tone Art Nouveau barstools, on the other by a wall of artisanal tequilas reaching all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. At the right side of the image, individual dining tables in dark wood and oiled metal are cast in somber window-light and shadow, like a Vermeer painting of a high-end gastropub. In reality, the place feels like a cave: dark and in-set, with a guillotine of expensive brass lights dangling overhead. Patrick sits in the corner of a large, steep-backed booth upholstered in cerulean velvet, with two brand-new copies of his novel Elsinore Lane on the table before him. He's tall enough, five foot ten, which is almost six feet, but the booth is designed to make all guests feel small and weak, regardless of their size or body type. The tufted back rises up over h...

Autorentext
Alexandra Kleeman is the author of Intimations, a short story collection, and the novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among other publications, and her other writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is the winner of the Berlin Prize and the Bard Fiction Prize, and was a Rome Prize Literature Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She lives in Staten Island and teaches at the New School.

Klappentext

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A novelist discovers the dark side of Hollywood and reckons with ambition, corruption, and environmental collapse in “a darkly satirical reflection of ecological reality” (Time)

LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Vulture, Thrillist, Literary Hub

“An urgent novel about our very near future, and a deeply addictive pleasure.”—Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies

Novelist Patrick Hamlin has come to Los Angeles to oversee the film adaptation of one of his books and try to impress his wife and daughter back home with this last-ditch attempt at professional success. But California is not as he imagined. Drought, wildfire, and corporate corruption are everywhere, and the company behind a mysterious new brand of synthetic water seems to be at the root of it all. Patrick finds an unlikely partner in Cassidy Carter—the cynical starlet of his film—and the two investigate the sun-scorched city, where they discover the darker side of all that glitters in Hollywood.

Something New Under the Sun is an unmissable novel for our present moment—a bold exploration of environmental catastrophe in the age of alternative facts, and “a ghost story not of the past but of the near future” (The New York Times).

Zusammenfassung
Kleeman is a visionary writer . . . She s also very funny. These two qualities are shown to great effect here, as she turns her attention to the movie business, our looming climate crisis, corporate malfeasance and the Disney child star system. It s a brilliant, ambitious book. Refinery29

With nods to Beckett and Stoppard, Kleeman juxtaposes fiery doom with passages of sharp, absurdist dialogue and a sprinkle of one-liners reminiscent of Fleabag. Instyle

The varieties of emergency ecological, psychological, familial, medical are the half-hidden subject of Kleeman s novel, burning at the periphery of what begins as a modishly detached rollick through Hollywood and its empty promises. . . . It is a ghost story not of the past but of the near future, a ghost story as alarm bell, one hard to leave in the realm of fiction. The New York Times

Kleeman s world is unsettled, but so is ours. And she leans into that unsettledness to create a world that is just a few notches more uncanny than our own, starkly making the absurdity of ours that much more clear. Nylon

Kleeman s great skill, and this novel s abiding triumph, is how seamlessly she blends the horrific with the mundanely troubling, the ridiculous or the impossible with the ordinarily absurd. LA Review of Books

Throughout, Kleeman writes expressively about place and the manifold ways our lives are shaped by our imperiled environment, foregrounding the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change and its attendant anxieties. Vulture

Because this is an Alexandra Kleeman novel, none of it goes where you think it s going to, but it s all so wildly entertaining and beautifully written that it really doesn t matter where you end up. Literary Hub

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