Baby Lewski: A Novel [9798260200049]

Overview

A hypnotic, darkly comic, and razor-sharp debut, Baby Lewski is Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays for a new generation of damned twentysomethings.

“Claudia Ross is the new arbiter of the L.A. novel . . . clever, propulsive, and genuinely eerie.” -Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs

Baby Lewski is adrift, recently graduated and living in the San Fernando Valley with her mother, a washed-up actress. One smoky August Monday, Baby takes a job as the assistant to a reclusive celebrity ob-gyn, Carmine Gold. Tasked with managing his VIP patients and archiving his world-renowned collection of Western antiques, Baby is rapidly subsumed by Carmine's bizarre demands-and by his omnipresent security system that surveils her every move. When the workday ends, Baby struggles to relate to those closest to her: her eccentric, overbearing mom, busy preparing to be killed off a long-running network television series, and her sort-of boyfriend, Adrian, whose cynicism threatens his own precarious job working for a deranged food delivery app.

Set over one topsy-turvy workweek, Baby's quest to find her place in a turbulent Los Angeles quickly turns as strange and uncanny as the city itself. Traversing clogged freeways, derelict movie theaters, an Italian restaurant patronized by pedophiles, and Carmine Gold's claustrophobic Topanga Canyon lair, Baby descends deeper into Hollywood's rabbit hole, a world where work, entertainment, sex, and exploitation are endlessly intertwined.

Sinister, satirical, and quietly heartbreaking, Baby Lewski is a portrait of contemporary work, youth, and intimacy from one of our most electrifying and original new voices.