January 24, 2022
In Barasch’s addictive if uninspired debut, a 24-year-old New York City bookseller becomes fixated on her boyfriend’s ex. Naomi Ackerman starts investigating Rosemary Pierce online, which quickly turns into physical stalking. Naomi follows Rosemary, a book editor, around the city and starts casual conversations with her, without letting on to Caleb, a reticent Welsh mathematician. During a launch party at Naomi’s shop for a book Rosemary edited, the two women exchange numbers and become fast friends. Naomi, a wannabe novelist, writes about their encounters in order to take control of her “narrative” with Caleb and to create a world in which she wins Caleb and is “braver, bolder, more reckless.” As she tests the limits of her relationships with both Caleb and Rosemary, she imagines herself to be more “adventurous” than Rosemary, as when, for instance, she initiates sex with Caleb in the hallway of her apartment building. At times, Naomi comes across as a parody of a self-absorbed writer, which makes this story of wish fulfillment read like satire without the skewering, and Barasch adds a trauma plot that explains Naomi’s behavior but feels hackneyed. Still, she does a fine job building tension between the two women. This isn’t the finest example of the people-behaving-badly story, but it should just do the trick for those into such tales. Agent: Callie Deitrick and Wendy Sherman, Wendy Sherman Assoc.
Starred review from January 15, 2022
A writer looking for inspiration stalks and befriends her boyfriend's ex in this stylish, energetic debut. Naomi Ackerman is a sparsely published 24-year-old writer who has recently entered into her first committed relationship with Caleb, a Welsh expatriate who works in catastrophe modeling. Deeply insecure, both about her slow-to-start literary career (she lives rent-free in a Greenwich Village apartment--no excuses!) and her new relationship (does he love her or just the convenient location of her apartment?), Naomi is unprepared to learn that Caleb's ex-girlfriend Rosemary lives in Brooklyn and edits for a major imprint. What begins as anxious curiosity quickly and compellingly escalates into obsession. Naomi orchestrates accidental run-ins with Rosemary and deceives her into becoming her rock-climbing partner, editor, confidante, and friend. All the while, Naomi greedily mines their interactions for material, altering details on the page as she does in real life, where lies and half-truths proliferate. At once a compassionate portrait of someone so desperate for intimacy that she can't help but sabotage it and an incisive study of female friendship at its most toxic and proprietary, this dread-laden psychological thriller is smart, jarring, and funny. Its imperfections--occasionally clumsy dialogue (at one point, Naomi's otherwise savvy grandmother says, "I've been bingeing--is that the word you use?--The Crown") and a climax that lacks much of the force of the buildup--distract from but don't quite diminish the bewitching effect of the narrator. Naomi, as a character, is electric; her sinister fixation ("I've turned into a more dangerous--but more purposeful--version of myself," she surmises) is as unsettling as it is contagious. Propulsive storytelling and an irresistible narrator from a sharp new writer.
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Starred review from February 1, 2022
Twenty-four-year-old aspiring writer Naomi Ackerman seems to have it all: a job as a bookseller that leaves her ample time to write; a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment she resides in rent-free, thanks to her grandmother; and a handsome Welsh boyfriend, Caleb, whom she's fallen hard for. And then Caleb casually mentions that his ex-girlfriend Rosemary, for whom he moved to New York, contacted him out of the blue. Though Caleb insists he's over Rosemary, Naomi starts to spiral, tracking down Rosemary, an editor at a publishing house, and orchestrating an accidental meeting. Stalking Rosemary on social media and inserting herself into Rosemary's life, Naomi finds her fixation growing, but she chalks it up to research as she starts to write about herself, Rosemary, and Caleb, crafting what she intends to be her first novel. In her own first novel, Barasch peels back the layers of Naomi's obsessive behavior and apparent emotional detachment to reveal a deeply damaged but utterly compelling young woman. Readers may cringe as Naomi crosses boundaries, but they won't be able to look away. Barasch's suspenseful puzzle-box tale should appeal to readers of the You series by Caroline Kepnes.
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