Miss Misery
A Novel
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Once I started, I couldn't stop. It felt like falling down the stairs....
Meet David Gould: abandoned by his girlfriend, pushing the deadline for his first book, tormented by writer's block, and obsessed with the impossibly sexy, overwhelmingly alive diaries young people keep online. Outside it's a beautiful, Brooklyn summer. But inside his apartment David is sleeping in, screening calls, draining beer after beer, and dreaming of Miss Misery -- aka twenty-two-year-old provocateur Cath Kennedy -- a total stranger with impeccable music taste and an enviable nightlife.
Now meet David Gould online. Here, in his fictional diary, he's a downtown DJ and an inveterate night owl, drinking and charming countless girls until the sun comes up.
But when Miss Misery moves to New York City and begins canoodling with an insufferable hipster, David's diary mysteriously begins updating itself. The reason? David Gould has a doppelgänger, an obnoxious shadow set on claiming David's newly glamorous life as his own. Even worse for David, the phone calls from his editor are becoming increasingly desperate, and the voice mails from his girlfriend -- an ocean away -- are becoming more and more distant. And then there are all of the instant messages from seventeen-year-old Ashleigh Bortch, an emo kid in Salt Lake City with an inappropriate crush on David and a knack for showing up at precisely the wrong time. Forced out of his apartment, David Gould is facing the fight of his life.
With humor, heart, and a vibrant, genre-jumping soundtrack, Andy Greenwald captures the essence of what it means to be young and struggling with identity in the new century. From cyberspace to nightclub bathrooms, from New York City to Utah, Miss Misery is a fast-paced, funny story about the timeless need to become the main character in your own life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Spin writer and author of the "emo" history Nothing Feels Good aims for lighthearted social commentary amid a quasi-bildungsroman/ romance/mystery in his debut novel. Twenty-something Brooklyn-dweller David Gould is fixated on blogs, particularly one belonging to Cath Kennedy, the titular Miss Misery. David has a lost love and a book deadline to deal with, but instead he's reading strangers' misadventures and typing fictitious events into his own online diary. Then his alter ego takes human form and becomes king of the Lower East Side, claiming the real-life Cath, David's good reputation and several thousands of his dollars in the process. Snarky and decadent both online and off, Cath, Greenwald fitfully tries to persuade us, is really actually quite charming. The author does a better job of endearing us to Ashleigh, who reaches out to David from her cookie-cutter Utah suburb. While convincing characterization isn't Greenwald's strong suit, his prose is alive with description (though there are questionable moments: "The empty beer bottles and glasses that lined the tables... skipped and lurched with every downbeat, forcing them on a Bataan-style death march towards the floor"). David and Co.'s enthusiasm for New York is palpable and their knowledge of music extensive, which makes them good for a tour and a few chuckles.