April 15, 2024
The stories in Levy’s crackling debut collection gleefully mix high and low culture and brim with youthful wisdom. The characters in “Love Story” are sketched with terms from ancient history and the internet: “He was in his fall of Rome era. She was serving sixth and final mass extinction realness. His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu.” In “Z Was for Zoomer,” which is framed as a glossary of Gen Z slang (“Fail” means “to mess up big time... to get hurt, to fall, to break, to destroy”), Levy expresses nostalgia for a time before the niche humor of memes (“We even make memes about this, our failure to understand anything but memes”). “Pillow Angels” chronicles the exploits of four high school best friends in Los Angeles who get nose jobs, use cocaine, and turn a bathroom into a “Roman vomitorium.” Some of the cultural descriptions feel perfunctory, but Levy shines when capturing her characters’ existential dread, as in “Written by Sad Girl in the Third Person”: “She wants a cigarette or an agent... or peace in the Middle East... or to be no one or to be someone.” Levy announces herself as an astute interpreter of Zoomer culture. Agents: Abbie Walters and Mollie Glick, CAA.
September 13, 2024
Listeners will want to buckle up for Levy's vibrant debut, a dizzying array of angsty and entertaining stories exploring coming-of-age for those who've grown up in an era where the Internet has always existed. While some of the stories have previously appeared in print (e.g., the buzzy "Good Boys," first published in The New Yorker in 2021), others are new. With characters that are surreal and edgy but very much human and hopeful, Levy bounces through a kaleidoscope of topics--privilege, misogyny, GenZ slang, societal expectations, beauty, politics, wealth, and more. Some of the stories are semiautobiographical. Levy, aware of privilege and occasionally stymied by it, often returns to apocalyptic settings to express her angst, employing evocative, snappy dialogue to provide deep insight into a world of instant information and ennui. Levy narrates the audiobook with a singular voice that borders on vocal fry but never quite reaches it. The audio is delivered as the semi-intoxicated confessions of a dear friend sobering up but still feeling that everything is both right and wrong with the world simultaneously. VERDICT An occasionally disorienting but revealing listen about the highs and lows of life in the Internet age.--Laura Trombley
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