Jun
17
1:00am
SKYLIT: One's Company, by Ashley Hutson with Sara Levine
By Skylight Books
One's Company (W. W. Norton & Company)
For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad, this fearless debut chronicles one woman’s escape into a world of obsessive imagination.
Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the voice that reminds her of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three’s Company.
When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision—to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity—takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three’s Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.
Ashley Hutson is a writer living in rural Maryland. Her work has appeared in Granta, Electric Literature, Catapult, Fanzine, and elsewhere. Her honors include the 2018 Small Fictions Award, judged by Aimee Bender, and several Pushcart Prize nominations.
Sara Levine is the author of the short story collection SHORT DARK ORACLES and the novel TREASURE ISLAND!!!. She teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Praise for One's Company -
[An] affecting and ingenious debut... This darkly clever work dramatizes the necessity and fragility of illusions, showing how they can crumble when broadcast to the world. Hutson is off to a brilliant start. — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[Ashley] Hutson is far too smart...to turn Bonnie into an easy case study on the effects of trauma...Hutson’s prose, too, is as cleareyed and convincing as the novel’s premise is farcical...Looks at trauma, wealth, and infatuation through a startlingly original lens. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
This book is such a savvy, deadpan, moving meditation-unto-absurdity on obsession and trauma and throwaway television and the ways that our hobbies can hurt us and heal us and sometimes overwhelm us. I absolutely loved it — Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
Like some uncanny hybrid of Tom McCarthy, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Mulholland Drive, Ashley Hutson’s high concept black comedy, One’s Company, packs deranged laughs against deep trauma in a no-holds-barred debut. Surreal, ambitious, and page-turning, the painful memory performance of Bonnie Lincoln’s wish to live forever in a sitcom might be more realistic than the realism we think we know. — Blake Butler, author of Alice Knott
Ashley Hutson’s novel fearlessly takes on trauma, loneliness, madness, and desire in wholly unexpected ways. The dazzling imagination of the novel’s formidable protagonist, Bonnie Lincoln, is rivaled only by that of her brilliant creator: One’s Company is a totally original, bitterly funny, and emotionally complex tale about the power of fantasy to both save and destroy the things we cherish. — Maryse Meijer, author of The Seventh Mansion
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Skylight Books
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