A novelist discovers the dark side of Hollywood and reckons with ambition, corruption, and connectedness in the age of environmental collapse and ecological awakening-a darkly unsettling near-future novel for readers of Don DeLillo and Ottessa Moshfegh
ONE OF SUMMER'S BEST BOOKS: The Wall Street Journal • Time • Vulture • Parade • LitHub
"A darkly satirical reflection of ecological reality."- Time
"Magnificent and stunning."-Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation and Hummingbird Salamander
"Wildly entertaining and beautifully written."- LitHub
East Coast novelist Patrick Hamlin has come to Hollywood with simple goals in mind: overseeing the production of a film adaptation of one of his books, preventing starlet Cassidy Carter's disruptive behavior from derailing said production, and turning this last-ditch effort at career resuscitation into the sort of success that will dazzle his wife and daughter back home. But California is not as he imagined: Drought, wildfire, and corporate corruption are omnipresent, and the company behind a mysterious new brand of synthetic water seems to be at the root of it all. Patrick partners with Cassidy-after having been her reluctant chauffeur for weeks-and the two of them investigate the sun-scorched city's darker crevices, where they discover that catastrophe resembles order until the last possible second.
In this often-witty and all-too-timely story, Alexandra Kleeman grapples with the corruption of our environment in the age of alternative facts. Something New Under the Sun is a meticulous and deeply felt accounting of our very human anxieties, liabilities, dependencies, and, ultimately, responsibility to truth.
