Exquisite Mariposa

In the aftermath of a reality TV deal gone wrong, Fiona Alison Duncan asks the question, Can you rewrite your life? The answer, her debut novel Exquisite Mariposa, follows a cast of housemates as they navigate questions of art making and economies, breakups and breakdowns, and the internet and its many obsessions. Given the initials F.A.D. at birth, Fiona Alison Duncan has always had an eye for observing the trends around her. But after years of looking for answers in books and astrological charts and working as a celebrity journalist to make rent, Fiona discovers another way of existing: in the Real, a phenomenological state few humans live in. Fiona’s journey to the Real takes her to Koreatown, Los Angeles, where she sublets a room in La Mariposa. There, in the aftermath of a reality TV deal gone wrong, Fiona asks the question, Can you rewrite your life? The answer, her debut novel, Exquisite Mariposa, follows a cast of friends and lovers as they navigate questions of art making and economies, breakups and breakdowns, and the Internet and its many obsessions. The reality show doesn’t come to pass, but Fiona chronicles their lives—and captures the zeitgeist—in a book also titled Exquisite Mariposa Fiona is an unforgettably frank and forthright narrator, navigating financial and emotional insecurity, addictions, and the culture industry, and exploring ideas of trauma, astrology, sexuality, and more Duncan’s sharp and relatable observations on everything from subtle facial injections to potential nutritional yeast sponsorships to the depressing reality of social castes are somber but often hilarious, and fans of The Gift, MacArthur Park, and Surveys will love Exquisite Mariposa; she takes textures of the everyday and translates them into a written world that feels both contemporary and familiar yet also fresh and forward-thinking Exquisite Mariposa examines the many layers of the curated self, through the removed lenses of social media and re-reviewing oneself through social media, a layer specific to this twenty-first-century digital media landscape The author Fiona Alison Duncan has written for New York, Los Angeles Review of Books, Dazed, The New Inquiry, Ssense, and many other publications, and is well connected in Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles; she runs two reading seris, Hard to Read and Pillow Talk Lexile Measure: 910L Bookseller Praise for Exquisite Mariposa "Living rooms divided into bedrooms by hanging sheets, energy healers prescribing gay poetry, a man jacking off while driving a minivan. Class consciousness as something like performance art. Kundalini. Being twenty-whatever. The Real. 'I love Los Angeles . . . Nowhere have I felt so happy to have stereotypes confirmed.' Fiona Alison Duncan's Koreatown come-as-you-are novel is the best contemporary telling of L.A. that I've read—and Los Angeles is the love of my life. One canceled reality TV show contract about a group of friends sharing an apartment becomes the 'slow days, fast company' story of life in the framework of the performance industry that Eve Ba