I MAKE MY OWN FUN

Movie star becomes obsessed with a one-night stand in this darkly comic debut.

Marina is the world’s darling: Discovered at 15, she’s the it girl, humble, beautiful, and in a picture-perfect relationship with another popular actor. Behind the scenes, however, Marina is a sociopath, her public persona a facade that hides a woman interested only in keeping herself entertained and the world adoring. After the London premiere of her latest movie, one of her twisted games brings her to a pub where she runs into cool-girl bartender Anna. Anna is almost as confident as Marina, unimpressed by her star power but intrigued enough to follow her back to her hotel for a one-night stand. As time passes, Marina finds she can’t stop thinking about Anna. When she returns to London determined to resume their courtship, the line between wooing and obsession becomes blurred until something has to break. Beer’s prose is crisp and witty, catapulting the reader into a mind that’s constantly making up its own logic and interpreting things as it wants. Breaking up the first-person narration with interview snippets and posts from internet message boards bridges the gap between the novel’s unreliable narrator and real-world perceptions of Marina in a fresh and entertaining way. Wasting no time, the novel moves forward in short chapters that leave no room to breathe or take a moment to think things through. Marina’s point of view is myopic but compelling. Her overweening self-confidence guarantees the tale will end in tragedy, but since there’s no telling what the sure-to-come disaster will be or how it will reflect on her, it’s impossible to look away.

A wickedly smart novel from an engaging new voice.