Fake Accounts

A woman in a post-election tailspin discovers that her boyfriend is an anonymous online conspiracy theorist in this provocative and subversive debut novel that examines social media, sex, feminism, and fiction, the connection they've all promised, and the lies they help us tell. On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous Internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in Internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she's not exactly shocked by the revelation. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies. Half-relieved that she now has a reason to escape the already-floundering relationship, she plots to break up with him while on a trip to the Women's March in DC. Until she gets a phone call from her boyfriend's mother--he's been killed in a biking accident. Shaken, and suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York--or be anywhere in particular--our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation through a collection of fake personas that she creates and employs in dating apps and at expat meetups, in open-plan offices and bureaucratic waiting rooms. Narrated with seductive confidence and subversive wit, Fake Accounts challenges the way current conversations about the self and community, delusions and gaslighting, and fiction and reality play out in the Internet Age and our cultural moment more broadly.