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Followers

Review

Followers

Remember when the internet was supposed to bring us all together? It’s hard to imagine now, in an era of noxious tweets, Russian bots on Facebook and creeping loss of privacy. Not so long ago, though, we were on the cusp of a bright future, with democratized access to information, new ways of building community and stronger social connections. But something went wrong along the way. And if you think things are bad now, they could get so much worse, as Megan Angelo imagines in her debut novel, FOLLOWERS, a sharp, timely satire that is by turns funny and terrifying.

The book opens in 2051. A woman named Marlow breaks into a New York City apartment and opens a piece of stolen mail. She can’t read the letter’s cursive handwriting, but knows it contains some hidden information about her past. Paper, she has learned, is “synonymous with secrets.” And the secret contained in this decades-old letter will upend Marlow’s entire sense of self.

"...a sharp, timely satire that is by turns funny and terrifying.... This isn’t just an episode of 'Black Mirror' in book form. It’s also about female friendship, motherhood and identity."

Marlow is a star. She has lived her entire life in a Truman Show-esque California town called Constellation, where all the residents are constantly on camera, performing for their followers. (Think a never-ending, always-on season of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”) Marlow is one of the town’s most popular personalities; more than 12 million people tune in to watch her every move via devices that are now embedded in their wrists, rather than carried in their pockets.

How did Marlow and her neighbors in Constellation come to be living in this realm of perpetual surveillance? To understand that, Angelo takes us back to 2015, when twentysomething would-be novelist Orla Cadden is churning out clickbait for a celebrity gossip site called Lady-ish. Orla sublets a bedroom in her apartment to Floss Natuzzi, who has come to New York to parlay her role on a reality show titled “Who Wants to Work at a Surf Shack” into true fame. “Floss didn’t want to be an actress,” Orla observes. “She wanted to be what she already was, even if nobody knew it yet: A celebrity. A person, exaggerated.”

Soon, Floss and Orla have become partners, if not exactly friends, with the latter using her platform at Lady-ish to catapult Floss into a new level of notoriety. Floss begins dating another social media celeb named Aston Clipp, and they land a reality show called “Flosston Public.” Orla’s hard work is rewarded with a minor role as Floss’ “sarcastic schlump” of a sidekick.

Angelo cleverly skewers contemporary celebrity and social media culture, with its relentless self-promotion, carefully curated public profiles and hysterical headlines. (“You Won’t BELIEVE What This Megastar Looks Like WITHOUT Her Extensions,” screams a top-performing Lady-ish article.) Floss, whose motivations for seeking stardom are never entirely clear, is not a pure villain but rather a person so wholly absorbed in creating the fiction of her life that she fails to see or understand that her actions have real-world consequences.

Meanwhile, Orla continues to think herself somewhat above the entire thing, even as she shifts from cynical observer to active participant in the star-making ecosystem. She wants fame too, though of a different kind than Floss. And like Floss, she is willing to jettison her past in order to become her new, imagined self. Long after the producers start crafting “Flosston Public’s” storyline, Orla continues to believe that she is the one controlling her narrative. And she critically underestimates the degree to which Floss will go to remain a star, with devastating consequences.

If the present-day sections of FOLLOWERS function as a pointed social critique, the chapters set in 2051 are pure dystopia. The residents of Constellation are a new breed of government-sanctioned celebrity that emerged after an event known as The Spill. Without giving away too much, Angelo imagines what might happen if all the secrets we’ve offered up to the cloud were suddenly revealed. The consequences, she posits, would be devastating, though after a long build-up, the eventual reveal of what really happened during the crisis is somewhat anticlimactic.

But FOLLOWERS is about more than just the dangers of chasing likes and giving up our most intimate details to companies like Facebook. This isn’t just an episode of “Black Mirror” in book form. It’s also about female friendship, motherhood and identity. After fleeing Constellation, Marlow has to figure out who she is, how to think for herself, and what she (not the network or her viewers) wants from her life. Back in 2015, Orla finds herself in a nightmare situation of her own making, after her toxic relationship with Floss reaches a crisis point. Too late, she discovers that there’s a difference between being someone’s friend and being their follower.

Reviewed by Megan Elliott on January 17, 2020

Followers
by Megan Angelo

  • Publication Date: November 10, 2020
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Graydon House
  • ISBN-10: 1525809962
  • ISBN-13: 9781525809965