Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler
A young woman looks through her boyfriend’s phone and discovers shocking information: he is a well-known and anonymous internet conspiracy theorist. She’s already a pro at internet fakery, irony, and anger, so the news doesn’t exactly surprise her. Actually, she is relieved because he was always a little distant, and while travelling to the Women’s March in Washington, DC, she hatches a plan to break up with him. But this is merely the first of many odd turns that reveal a world in which internet lies alter the truths.
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler
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Our unnamed narrator abruptly loses all reason to remain in New York and becomes increasingly estranged from her friends and coworkers. She flees to Berlin and begins her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, such as dating apps, ex-pat meetups, open-plan offices, and formal waiting rooms. She starts to believe that she cannot trust anyone; after all, shouldn’t the opposite be true?
Fake Accounts examines how current discussions about the self and community, delusions and gaslighting, and fiction and truth play out in the digital age. It is narrated with seductive confidence and sly wit.
This book will take you inside the head of a 20-something woman who lives in Brooklyn, blogs about “culture” and the “worst political ramifications” of any subject, and spends almost all of her time on social media. The novel’s premise, which starts in 2016 immediately following the Presidential election, is very current. After meeting in Berlin, the narrator and Felix move in together in Brooklyn. She decides to break up with him after learning about his secret Internet existence as a conspiracy theorist with a large following.
She creates new backstories for each person she meets in person, including the men she goes on dates with after downloading a dating app. She ponders her relationship with Felix and considers why she chose to stay and return to Berlin in the first place. Though occasionally tiresome, what goes on in her thoughts is frequently filled with funny social commentary about contemporary society, particularly its feminist politics, which differ greatly from those in Jane Austen’s novels.
