This book reminded me of The Passenger, except it is langourous and sleezy where The Passenger is breakneck and harrowing. It is about Alex, who we follow as she sleepwalks through a town that I assume is The Hamptons after she gets dumped by here boyfriend(-ish and of only a few weeks) Simon for getting embarassingly bombed at a fancy party.
Alex had been informally living with Simon after falling out with her roomates in the city (New York) and you learn that she is on the run from some guy named Dom, who it turns out she stole money from to pay off some older debts. That is, Alex is completely broke and seems to have no friends or family she can, or at least not any she is willing to, lean on. So, she formulates a bizarre plan— one that never really makes sense. She will give Simon a week to cool off before showing up uninvited to his Labor Day party, at which point he will take her back and let her keep living with him. She spends the intervening days anxiously, but not frantically, hustling for room and board. It reads a lot like how I imagine one slowly slips into homelessness— bouncing between couches, spare rooms, and one-night stands until you feel like you’ve overstayed your welcome everywhere.
I spent a weird amount of time throughout the story trying to decide if Alex is a some sort of sex worker. There are many encounters and flashbacks that suggest as much, but those moments were all missing important details, like any mention (even oblique) of payment. In the end I decided she’s just a confidence-woman for whom sex is just one of many means of ingratiation.
I found the prose a bit disjointed and awkward. Some of the reviews on the cover suggest that might be an intentional stylistic thing, meant to instill a sense of doom or unease. If that’s the case, the effect was minimal on my reading. I finished the book after all, so it’s not like it was unbearable. If it were any longer, though, I might have DNF’d.
I was completely caught off guard by this hilarious sentence on p. 272, right near the end of the book. It made me bark-laugh.
She took an anxious little shit in the upstairs bathroom.