November 20, 2023
Journalist and YouTuber Graziosi’s witty and unsettling debut shines an uncompromising light on European influencers. Maia, 26, the novel’s caustic narrator, has come undone after the death of her younger sister after a series of mental and physical health problems. Leaving her university classes in Paris, she has moved to Milan with her older boyfriend, a professor who is rapidly losing interest in her. There, a friend asks if she might be interested in working as an image consultant for Gloria, a prominent social media personality who’s still in high school. Maia and Gloria become friends of a sort, with the benignly vacuous Gloria pumping Maia for her opinions, and Maia growing accustomed to a life of luxury until a drug-fueled weekend reveals the cracks in their relationship. The lightly sketched plot wobbles at its few moments of consequence, mostly involving Maia’s feelings about her sister’s death. For the most part, though, Maia’s narration remains tartly amusing, full of acid one-liners about the people in this strange new world (Gloria smiles “in every photo as if she has facial paralysis”; another influencer bemoans her white privilege while “brushing away a golden lock from her lips which have been enlarged by injections”). Graziosi’s trip down the social media rabbit hole is as glossy and entertaining as it is perceptive.
September 1, 2024
Maia is muddling her way through existence, using weed to numb the shame of being a 26-year-old dropout with a dead-end job and a dysfunctional relationship. When she lands a job curating content for 18-year-old influencer Gloria, she realizes there is an extreme degree of pressure behind the perceived perfection of social media. Despite this disillusionment, Maia is initially flattered when Gloria begins to echo her thoughts and emulate her writing. Eventually, Maia begins to fear that Gloria would be content to absorb her identity until nothing remains. Graziosi makes a thought-provoking debut with this unsettling story about flawed friendships and social scrutiny. Translated from Italian by Lucy Rand, some of the colloquialisms become clunky in English, but this detracts minimally from the compelling, character-driven story. Narrator Barrie Kealoha gives a sedate but striking performance of Maia's first-person perspective. Her expressive portrayal of this grimly humorous narrative yields an absorbing listening experience. VERDICT Will appeal to listeners seeking an intense, intricate fiction about influencers, imitators, and the crafting of identity. Recommended for fans of Sally Rooney, Hazel Hayes, and Jana Casale.--Lauren Hackert
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February 1, 2024
Translated from the Italian, Graziosi's debut novel follows the entwining and disinvolvement of two young women on either side of a social media juggernaut. Narrator Maia, age 26, is stuck three times over--with her disconnected boyfriend, in her job at a bar, and in Milan, a city she dislikes--when she's hired to help (befriend? advise?) 18-year-old Gloria, who has millions of online followers. Maia is simultaneously bad at this job and good at it, endearing and repulsive as a character, relatable and baffling. Readers are aligned with Maia and mystified by Gloria and her influence-obsessed world. Of her sister, Maia writes early in the novel, ""Anyway, I felt absolutely no pain when Eva died, and I still don't."" This self-delusion becomes impossible to maintain, as Maia takes risks with strangers, takes drugs, and risks her relationship with Gloria. When the pain Maia feels does surface, readers will encounter many achingly beautiful sentences. Social media's hall of mirrors, and its gained and lost followers, amplify the surreality of Maia's gritty, youthful struggle, which will resonate with readers.
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December 1, 2023
In a world where what people are selling is themselves, this novel asks whether there's any self left. At 26, Maia Gatti is treading water; she's dropped out of her competitive master's degree program in Paris and is living in Milan with an older boyfriend while picking up shifts at the local bar. Her biggest pleasure is buying gummy crocodiles and eating just one handful before dousing the rest in dishwashing detergent. There is a heart underneath all her apathy; she's drowning out her sister's recent death with Law & Order reruns. Her life changes when she gets a job as an image consultant to a pretty 18-year-old influencer named Gloria Linares. Maia can't stand Gloria until she sees the sadness beneath the girl's photo-ready exterior. As the two become intertwined, the boundaries between them start to fall away, and Gloria becomes the sun around which Maia turns. That is, until Gloria copies something that Maia can't bear to give away--her grief. An act of revenge severs the tie between the two and sets Gloria free from her manicured image. A cross between Ingmar Bergman's Persona and Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, this book shows what happens when an influencer is influenced--by someone with nothing left to lose. Graziosi tackles the question of what, in the digital age, is really ours.
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