From groundbreaking debut author Honor Levy, stories to delight and ensnare.
Walking the wire between imagination and confession, My First Book marks the arrival of an electric new talent. Honor Levy's uniquely riveting voice emerges from the chaos of coming of age in Generation Z. Never far from a digital interface, her characters grapple with formative political, existential, and romantic experiences in a web-drenched society on the brink of collapse.
Inventive, ambitious, and frequently surreal, the stories of My First Book are a mirrorball onto the world as it is. Levy illuminates what it is to be at once adorable, special, heavily medicated, consistently panicked, and completely sincere. One protagonist accompanies a girl with too many teeth through an abortion, while another discovers the infinite nature of love, a third reminisces about other sunsets that were "pinker, like way pinker," and another encounters God in a downtown arcade. To find and keep faith is the order of the day—but how?
"This book defies definition ... Oddly exquisite." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Crackling debut collection ... Levy shines when capturing her characters' existential dread ... Levy announces herself as an astute interpreter of Zoomer culture." —Publishers Weekly
"Experimental and creative ... A fascinating take on Gen Z life, lived online." —Booklist
"Fractal stories from the eschatological present, told in a strange, new, manic, and flarfy voice that I trust and endorse." —Tao Lin, author of Leave Society
"Nobody writes like Honor Levy. My First Book is brutal and feminine, dreamlike and fantastic. I relished every word." —Cat Marnell, author of How To Murder Your Life
This information about My First Book was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Honor Levy is a writer from California. She graduated from Bennington College in 2020. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and New York Tyrant and been anthologized in Flash Fiction America.
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