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A Novel
by Lauren Rothery
Bojack Horseman meets Joan Didion in this smart, sly, and irresistibly stylish debut novel about a jaded movie star and the two differently conflicted women in his orbit.
An aging, A-list movie star lotteries off the entirety of his mega-million blockbuster salary to a member of the general viewing public before taking up with a much younger model. His non-famous best friend (and often lover) looks on impassively, while recollecting their twenty-odd years of unlikely connection. And an aspiring filmmaker, unknown to them both, labors over a script about best friends and lovers while longing for the financial freedom to make great art.
Told in their alternating, intricately linked perspectives, Television is a funny, philosophically astute novel about phenomenal luck, whether windfall or chance encounter. Like Joan Didion's classic Play It as It Lays, but speaking to a since irrevocably changed Hollywood, it portrays a culture in crisis and the disparities in wealth, beauty, talent, gender, and youth at the heart of contemporary American life. In this glittering but strange new world, lit up by social media and streaming services—what, if not love, can be counted in your favor?
With plays in chronology, stretches of bright, nimble dialogue, and a profoundly modern style, Lauren Rothery's debut novel is a slim but arresting feat of literary impressionism, and marks the welcome arrival of a significant new talent to the landscape of American fiction.
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This information about Television 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.
Lauren Rothery was born in London and raised in San Diego. She spent her twenties writing and directing short films and music videos between New York and Los Angeles. In 2020, she moved to Europe and began writing fiction. Television is her first novel.
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