The Book of Ayn

by Lexi Freiman

An original and hilarious satire of both our political culture and those who rage against it, The Book of Ayn follows a writer from New York to Los Angeles to Lesbos as she searches for artistic and spiritual fulfillment in radical selfishness, altruism, and ego-death

After writing a satirical novel that The New York Times calls classist, Anna is shunned by the literary establishment and, in her hurt, radicalized by the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Determined to follow Rand’s theory of rational selfishness, Anna alienates herself from the scene and eventually her friends and family. Finally, in true Randian style, she abandons everyone for the boundless horizons of Los Angeles, hoping to make a TV show about her beloved muse.

Things look better in Hollywood—until the money starts running out, and with it Anna’s faith in the virtue of selfishness. When a death in the family sends her running back to New York and then spiraling at her mother’s house, Anna is offered a different kind of opportunity. A chance to kill the ego causing her pain at a mysterious commune on the island of Lesbos. The second half of Anna’s odyssey finds her exploring a very different kind of freedom – communal love, communal toilets – and a new perspective on Ayn Rand that could bring Anna back home to herself.

"A gimlet-eyed satirist of the cultural morasses and political impasses of our times" (Alexandra Kleeman), Lexi Freiman speaks in The Book of Ayn not only to a particular millennial loneliness, but also to a timeless existential predicament: the strangeness, absurdity, and hilarity of seeking meaning in the modern world.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Humor, Literary Fiction, Satire, Novels, Politics

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 14, 2023

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

so. much. fucking. fun.

[Nick Malone · Rating 3 out of 5]

"No one lives at the edge of calamity without secretly wishing to be destroyed."

"I had written two books of over eighty thousand words each, and yet it was the single minute of ranting with the head of a sheep that had given me all the love and attention I’d ever craved."

The Book of Ayn is a very funny, very self-aware and VERY niche satire that will probably only resonate as something "real" to those who dwell in a particular corner of the Internet. The experience of interacting with someone who sees Ayn Rand as someone worth having feelings about AND as a figure who is a legitimate threat to civility and progressivism, is not as common as this novel's narrator assumes it to be. Your ability to connect with this book will probably depend on your exposure to certain online phenomena: TikTok, deepfakes, Red Scare & their flankers, online critics being more famous than artists, Twitter microcelebrities.

The emotional center of the story-- whether it pays to be self-serving rather than self-sacrificing as we live through a very sacrificial moment in history-- can sometimes feel like a fake problem, a big "who cares." I adored Freiman's sense of humor and pacing, and The Book of Ayn is strongest when looking outward and diagnosing the culture. There are a lot of really outstanding lines in here about generational divides, the boringness of modernity, the stupid feedback loop of pop culture. Freiman's narrator serves as a stand-in for a lot of familiar "edgy" Internet personalities-- people who can't help kicking hornets' nests then acting incredulous when they get stung. It's very satisfying to see this impulse explored so plainly, and in such a funny way. Freiman's weird, scatological imagery is so memorable in the first half of the book.

Unfortunately, for me, once this book loses Ayn (and a fondness for her ideas), it loses momentum. The narrator abandons her research and creative process developing a Bojack-Horseman-style Ayn-Rand-inspired TV show after what I thought were some pretty tame negative responses from acquaintances; and flees to a culty, spiritual commune where the goal is ego death. This makes The Book of Ayn feel like a different book entirely, like I was starting from scratch with a brand new character I knew almost nothing about. It was hard to maintain interest in this narrator who seemed defined only by petty grievances and a self-destructive streak. It doesn't help that the tone of the book seems to shift pretty dramatically once the commune is introduced-- introspective and vague, and not especially funny. Nothing nearly as concretely expressed in the book's first half.

The narrator's pettiness and self-destructiveness is sort of the point of the entire novel-- and as the narrator makes more and more transparently stupid choices, you do feel that subconscious death drive that so many millennials/Gen Z's seem to have. I just wish this very human idea was assigned to a character that felt more perceptive-- more Randian. There's no real judgement on Rand's ideas by the end, and essentially a return to self-interested form for the narrator. The second half of the book feels like a long, unnecessary diversion in this sense-- I found myself wishing she'd stuck to her guns and just MADE something, whether people liked it (or her) or not.

Still very much worth a read if you run in these circles or have felt worried about how nihilistic and "unreal" things are becoming.

Thanks to Catapult for the ARC <3

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tons of fun! Imagine Aesthetica or The Odyssey but actually sharp and funny, with a sprinkling of the anarchic energy possessed by something like Come Join Our Disease. A good balance of humour that can bite, and not always by punching up, but also has a soft core. At times feels like an experiment in letting a female character behave like male characters once did (benefitting from the status of ‘artist’ despite repeatedly failing to create anything meaningful, chasing a succession of younger partners) – and you could argue the impact of that trope is blunted by the sheer amount of books about ‘messy women’ we’re drowning in nowadays but this is more acute I think, maybe because its concept (washed-up novelist gets obsessed with the work and philosophy of Ayn Rand, tries to apply it to her life and art) is hyperspecific, so there’s a hook to hang things on that doesn’t relate to a relationship/sex/being single/having or not having kids. Or... at least not entirely. Also endlessly quotable; Freiman can write an observation that cuts like a knife.

I received an advance review copy of The Book of Ayn from the publisher through Edelweiss.

[Nat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jokes on me for thinking this would be interesting

[Marissa Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! It's funny and dark and wry and really smart. The depressed and cool and vaguely alt girl who really wants to be accepted feels very in line with writers like Halle Butler and Mona Awad in a great way. I think a basic familiarity with Ayn Rand's politics will help readers understand the humor/irony from the start, but the book does a really solid job of contextualizing so don't pass on the book if you aren't already familiar. Ironically (or not??) I can see this being made into an A24 film. Definitely a sad gross hot girl book in the best ways.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strong start, gets lost, goes nowhere

[Zoë · Rating 1 out of 5]

sometimes people CAN be too insufferable

[Sarah Paolantonio · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Boring and overwritten. With about 60 pages left, I can't bring myself to finish. Nothing grabbed me, everyone is terrible and uninteresting. Anna and Lexi are BOTH trying so hard! So many adverbs in these dialog tags, and from an Ivy League MFA? Traveling to a remote island for ego death? Somebody get these women some LSD, stat!

[Samuel Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eat Pray Love for cancelled millennials. Started off well but then meandered until the end. Couldn't help picturing Julia Roberts eating her gelato in Italy throughout, especially the 2nd half.

[CJ Alberts]

I’m obsessed with this book. She really eviscerated all of us

[Inside My Library Mind · Rating 4 out of 5]

there were parts of this i found absolutely brilliant - it's a very niche satire, but i think it's quite successful at commenting on the current culture.

unfortunately, the second part of the novel just did not come together for me - it felt like a different book, a different protagonist and the wittiness and sharpness of the first part (which i loved) were nowhere to be seen.

but i still recommend, since the first part is so clever and refreshing, and i will definitely read more from the author, i just wish that it kept the momentum throughout.

[gloam · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 because I enjoyed half of it. The premise was funny: egotistic writer gets canceled online and develops a fixation on Ayn Rand, whereupon her life starts mirroring Rand’s. The prose was really entertaining. Then, halfway through, the main character has an epiphany wherein she decides that she actually hates Ayn Rand and blames her for all her problems, which could have led into an interesting last act if it had led the main character into a further downward spiral or upward trajectory, but it just kind of wandered around aimlessly for the rest of the page count. It was repetitive and felt aimless, a retread of the same material, ie sexual fixation on teenage boys, scatological commentary, and inability to make sincere connections. I didn’t feel like I was really left with a deliberate takeaway.

[Courtney Maum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this! I wish, in fact, that it had lasted a bit longer. Weird, hilarious and impossible to predict, this is a great book to choose if you are in a reading rut or feel like you have been reading the same kinds of books over and over. You haven't read this one! Can't wait to see what Freiman does next.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a fun start, this satire of just about everything in contemporary life loses focus in the second half and gets repetitive. Still, there’s some laughs to be found here.

[lindsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up. Super weird, definitely one for the over educated intellectually pretentious girlies — but I mean, Red Scare Pod reference on like page 30? Obviously a book for me lol

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a fan of Ayn Rand way back in my misbegotten and much-regretted youth, so I was very interested in reading this novel. It didn’t work very well for me as a story, but from the perspective of character and social commentary I found it so interesting that this will be a pretty lengthy review.

Anna, a writer about to turn forty, finds herself cancelled for being an upper-class woman who wrote a satire on working-class drug addiction. The New York Times calls her narcissistic. Her publisher drops her, friends distance themselves, and she can’t find work in her field. By chance, she meets up with a group of Rand devotees, and Rand’s philosophy appeals to her. In a vulnerable moment when she desperately needs self-justification, she finds it in Rand’s Objectivist philosophy of living for yourself alone, by your own work alone, by your standards alone.

Again by chance, she harangues a man at a party about Objectivism and he assumes she must be writing about Rand and connects Anna with his son, who is a TV producer in Hollywood.

Anna is broke, and has to persuade her father to lend her the money to go to Hollywood (so much for living by your own work alone). He won’t lend her much, and the only living situation she can afford is on the futon of a small apartment where her roommate exercises loudly at random hours of the day or night and never flushes the toilet.

I didn’t feel too sorry for her. Anna is a thoroughly unlikeable character. At forty, she is still obsessed with how she looks and chasing after men in their teens and twenties. Also, all her friendships are transactional. It’s all about who can give her a place to crash, who can take her to parties where she will meet important people, who can advance her career, who can get her attention on social media. And everyone she knows is exactly like her. They are always bailing on each other if they get a better offer or just don’t feel good. They are all trying to use each other, or climb on top of each other to advance their careers. They throw around terms like “intersectionality” and claim to care deeply about things like female genital mutilation, but their social consciences are mostly performative.

The young people she meets in LA are even worse. They seemed to me to have no sense of self whatsoever. They are only their social media avatars. Their fad is to put an animal-face filter over their own faces on the internet. So, you literally can’t see them, much less see into them. And there’s nothing to see anyway. Anna’s barely-postpubescent boyfriend is so undeveloped that he can neither sleep with nor have a meal with another human being.

These people will do literally anything for attention. Anna’s friend Vivian, who has a mysterious illness (Or claims to. Who knows?), has contracted with her neighbors to present all of her symptoms on a vlog. The young folks have a site where followers can offer them money to complete ridiculous challenges. It’s a digital version of Rand’s ideal of completely unregulated capitalism, where the currency is attention.

Before long, Anna is in trouble again, for reading Ayn Rand at a party. In a rare moment of self-awareness, she realizes that she is always a sucker for contrarians, and suddenly she’s turned off by Rand.

She heads for a commune on the island of Lesvos in Greece with Vivian, so they can take training on “how to kill your ego.” But does Anna change? Take a wild guess.

The reason this novel didn’t work well for me as a story is because, towards the end, Anna tries to explain away her neurotic behavior by referring to the death of her baby brother when she was a very little girl. But she doesn’t change. At all. I think she thinks she’s changed. But she’s still sponging off other people. And she’s still selfish, self-deluded, and, yes, narcissistic.

But Freiman has sketched some dead-on characters and used them to illustrate the amoral emptiness of many internet-age lives. She has illustrated the vacuum at the heart of our Randian worship of the self – or, in this case, not even the self, but the IMAGE. Without love, without connection or community, without commitment to anything or anyone but themselves, the characters in this book are nothing but pitiful, ephemeral avatars.

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[Joshua Glasgow · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise of this book intrigued me when I first learned about it from a Goodreads Giveaway. From what I understood, it was about a woman who becomes enamored with Ayn Rand and her philosophy of self-interest, then later grows disillusioned with it. That spoke to me because in my high school and undergrad years I too felt an affinity for Rand, even making some limited attempts to model my moral choices in an Objectivist way, although I mostly believed in a modified version of Rand’s ideas in which altruism could be characterized as a self-interested act because of the feeling of happiness or pride that resulted. Though I now mostly side with those who decry Rand’s positions as immoral, I still retain some residual fondness for her as an author and for my watered-down version of her philosophy. I thought that THE BOOK OF AYN would speak to me personally.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. Although 39 years old, the book’s protagonist Anna is self-obsessed and self-righteous in a way that suggests somebody in their early 20s. That aspect reminds me of another book I loathed, Trisha Low’s SOCIALIST REALISM, for which I wrote in my review, “It’s hard to believe she was 32 and already a published writer when this book was released; she writes like a 15-year old novice.” It’s not that Lexi Freiman, author of THE BOOK OF AYN writes in a way that suggests inexperience, but rather that Anna the character seems so… un-mature. Her thoughts, her concerns, the tenor of conversation in the social circles she hangs out in, they’re all indicative of people who have no practical knowledge about the world but can only think in abstractions. There’s an argument to be made that that’s the point!, but even if that is so there remains a burning question: toward what end?

Anna begins the book having been “cancelled” for writing her own HILLBILLY ELEGY, which led to criticism that as a New York City elite she was not qualified to write about the experience of incestuous, chewin’-tobacco spittin’, bow-legged, backwoods Appalachian yahoos. It seems that her “cancellation” truly just amounts to a handful of bad reviews. Ever the contrarian, Anna gets fixated on Ayn Rand and then inexplicably gets offered the opportunity to write a half-hour sitcom based on Rand which she relocates to California to write. It is here primarily that she encounters caricatures of “woke” liberals and I struggled through this section trying to understand what the book’s point of view was. The grating left-wing characters in the book made me question whether Freiman really did sympathize with Rand, although on the other hand, the shallow way Anna speaks about Ayn Rand’s philosophy made me wonder whether Freiman actually had any knowledge about her writing at all. In the end, I suspect that Freiman’s intention is the most loathsome of all—to be a quote-unquote “equal opportunity offender”, taking potshots at both sides. This positioning of the author as above-it-all and therefore the most wise among us never fails to be obnoxious, but it’s doubly irritating here because her treatment of both sides of the political divide is so light as to obscure what exactly she’s going for. In short, I didn’t like it.

Then there’s the second half of the book, where protagonist Anna suddenly arrives in Greece for no reason and joins a cult-cum-resort spa which emphasizes meditation, letting go of ego, and sexual openness. I can see a germ of something here in that the loss of ego contrasts with Anna’s desire to emphasize ego in the first half, but it never comes together. She has an affair with a boy she thinks may possibly be underage and does her best to engage with the cult’s philosophy of mostly blissful ignorance, but this is never compelling either. Is the book making fun of Anna, or of this new philosophy again? What is the point it is trying to make? Ultimately, it just peters out without any resolution that I can recall. The most meaningful moment of the entire book comes when Anna realizes that everybody at the commune has been doing chores to keep the place running but she did nothing and had no awareness of the work the others were doing. Yet again, what this is meant to be a commentary on, though, is inscrutable. Is it about, like, millennials as a generation? It’s clear that this moment, more than any other, means something, but I can’t figure out what it means or why I should care.

I initially thought when I finished the book that I would give it 2 stars on Goodreads. I didn’t like it much, but I didn’t hate it exactly and generally I save my 1-star reviews for books which lead me to have a visceral negative response. But when I thought more deeply about it, I realized there are times when I’ve given out 5-star ratings even for books I didn’t necessarily feel were perfect simply because I could not think of anything critical to say about them. I think it’s fair to follow the same logic here. That is, while I did not hate this book, when I consider it I can’t really think of a single thing I liked about it. I have nothing to say in its favor. I’m kind of getting tired of writing this review now, frankly. A book that I hated would make me eager to excoriate it, but this… I just want to be done with it.

[Quadrivial · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first part of the book had some interesting commentary on cancel culture, but a lot of the rest reminded me of a female, neurotic, not-as-funny Woody Allen, including the attraction to underage members of the opposite sex. Meh.

[Erin Crane]

DNF at around 20%. This has a funny start, but it’s hard to maintain the joke over a whole book. Even a 200 page one. I also felt like I’m not politically or philosophically aware enough to fully appreciate the themes here.

[Brandon Allers · Rating 3 out of 5]

BBOOK INFO:
Publisher - Catapult
Author - Lexi Freiman
Illustrator - N/A
Page Count - 256
Type - Hardcover
Format - Case Binding
Cover - Symbol Based
Title(s) - The Book of Ayn
Audience - NA 18+
Genre - Art, Politics, Humor



Summary: Author Freiman sends us on our merry way to navigate the sometimes circuitous and all too often merciless world of comics/writers. Enter the protagonist who endeavors to provide the comic relief we all crave, but only at the expense of others. Laughing at our reflection would suggest that we spend some of our limited time on this planet living contrary to a world engine that can only feed off the desperation of never finding satisfaction that lasts, so we have to use every precious second searching for what everyone else considers precious and take a dump on it while photographing their despair. Our protagonist is locked in a series of cycles, knows it, and in trying to free themselves of systems that dictate their worth, stumbles onto the writings of Ayn Rand and takes a chance on the societal observations of the philosopher who might be able to shine a light on a world that can't decide if it wants the Vegas strip or a cave on the woods.


Pros: Quotable, Relatable internal monologue pushes readers out of their comfort zone.


Cons: Loses cohesion about halfway through (almost two separate stories), a reference section to the pop-culture references and philosophy, no maps (when your protagonist travels to new locations these are a must!).


Recommendation: This book might have two audiences. The first is anybody looking to follow a struggling writer who


MY FAVORITE QUOTE: " Why should empathy only work when you recognized that someone had been hurt like you'd been hurt?" Also, " It curled against the bowl, bereft of any paper. A middle finger to the notion of civility."



*** Manipura = Hunger and Energy Conversion
(This book has the 3,5, and 7-second hooks; pray for no bait and switch)

[Kym Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with many other people, I read Ayn Rand at a young and impressionable age and as a result became, for a short time, somewhat of a libertarian before maturing to realise that Rand is essentially immoral and her philosophy is a nothing—though her works do stay with you and have had an undeniable cultural influence.

The narrator of this book has a similar experience in her late 30s, an author who gets canceled for writing a book along the lines of Hillbilly Elegy when she is in reality a liberal New Yorker—she suddenly and inexplicably encounters the philosophy of Ayn Rand and embraces it fully.

Then, not much really happens. There are funny moments (I enjoyed a scene where the narrator has an encounter at a party with what are obviously Dasha and Anna from Red Scare podcast) and a few cutting observations but I just didn’t ever really get into the story and it doesn’t really go anywhere and there aren’t enough laugh out loud moments (though there are a few).

In all it left me a bit let down even though it has enjoyable elements.

[Eva Squire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elitist satire of elitism

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

the beginning of this started out intriguing and ridiculous and then it just got… so boring. i had to force myself to read the last 50 pages and also listen to a sex and the city podcast at the same time to get through it

[Claudia Sorsby · Rating 1 out of 5]

This started out well, but it started to fall apart in the middle, and the wheels completely came off in the final section.

Or, to break it up differently, the opening New York section was good, with some nice, sharply drawn characterizations and observations. The LA section started well, but then collapsed at pretty much the same pace as the narrator's plans for success. The Greek section started off weakly and completed the collapse.

It seemed, in some ways, as though the author had an idea—a modern, liberal writer who sees herself as a contrarian gets "canceled," and decides to restore her fortunes by contrarily championing the libertarian heroine Ayn Rand—but then, rather like her narrator, didn't know what to do with it, past page 50 or so.

Which was in some ways, unsurprising. Evidently our narrator didn't know much about Rand, a real drawback for someone trying to write about her (for a book or a TV show). She did seem to know a bit about New York, and if the story had stopped there, it would have been fine.

But no, the action moves to LA—except that there was no action, no character development, nada. There are few more tries to gloss Rand's work that don't go anywhere, and after some boring attempts to hang out with younger men our narrator realizes things aren't working out, runs out of money, and goes home to live with her mom.

Okay, but then after a few days she goes off to a meditation center in Greece with a friend. Suddenly, her money issues just disappear: On p.125 she has to leave LA because she can't cover her share of the rent, but four pages later she can afford to book an immediate flight back home to NY and a dozen pages later she can afford to fly to Greece and stay there, apparently indefinitely.

There is no mention of how she could afford any of this, or how she pays for anything there—and she's specifically described as having money to lavish on her new young boyfriend. But unfortunately, that sort of fit, because nothing about the time in Greece made any real sense.

I kept reading, waiting for a point, or an idea, or...something... to emerge from the descriptions of the meditation center, the people, the boy—but it didn't. There was one brief moment of realization, when someone points out to the narrator that everyone else had pitched in to help with chores, but she hadn't; but again, there was no actual impact, other than a sort of "D'oh, silly me!"

Which was sort of how I felt when I finished, and thought, "Why did I just do that? D'oh!"

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading THE BOOK OF AYN by Lexi Freiman! Right away the first line made me LOL! This novel is funny!! It’s about a thirty-something cancelled writer, Anna, who turns to the philosophy of Ayn Rand and leaves New York to go to Los Angeles to write a tv show based on Ayn. I was drawn into this novel immediately and read it quickly in three days. It was the perfect book to read in between some heavier books. I enjoyed following Anna on her journey to exciting locations and meeting interesting characters. It’s fun how she nicknamed all her lovers. There were several hilarious lines including this insult “I’m going to give your book one star on Amazon.” I loved the humour in this book that touches on cancel culture, the literary world, social media, political culture, selfishness and loneliness.

Thank you to Catapult for my gifted review copy!

[Katie Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is funny, and definitely clever, but also felt like a chore to get through. The protagonist was an unsympathetic “artist” who slept with people younger than themselves and is constantly looking to blame their failures on anything but themselves: idolizing Ayn Rand and constantly running from problems instead of owning up to them. No introspection. But instead of your typical man it was a woman! And that did not make it any easier to get through.

Yes it was a biting social commentary but also…ugh.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had some good philosophy tidbits and thinking about the world.. but for me the whole plot was so convoluted and far out there and Gen Z/Late Millennial feeling it didn't click with me at all.

[death spiral · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few preliminaries that have nothing to do with the star rating but are more general observations on how this fits with contemporary trends:

- Here’s another woman narrator obsessed with scat, a fact that, like I said above, is really neither here nor there but does seem to represent the extreme end of a generation of women writers obsessed with the grosser aspects of embodiment (Moshfegh being the most obsessed and the trend’s leading figure)

- is the NY literati novel poised to merge into the cancel culture novel? I’m guessing publishing is too ironwall woke (lol) to allow a full “vibe shift” to occur, and therefore satires like this one about the endless circuits of selfishness in our culture seem to be what will be published on the topic for the foreseeable future. Also, Freiman’s “Red Scare” stand-ins are only on two pages, but it’s a worrying sign.

- Like a lot of MFA writers, she loves to coin a cute verb. It’s something I wish I could do.

This was pretty good. Freiman threads a delicate needle in giving her narrator just the right amount of self-awareness to still be completely clueless, and Rand is a fantastic avatar for exploring the paradoxes of selfishness. Last section kinda trails off.

[Mikkel Rosengaard]

“It’s called being an edgelord,” podcaster Dasha Nekrasova wrote in 2019, “and it’s the most honourable thing you can do with your life.”

Nekrasova’s post-ironic call to arms reverberates through Lexi Freiman’s satirical novel The Book of Ayn, about a contrarian writer lost in the culture wars. Who is the more honourable figure—the self-serving contrarian or the self-sacrificing puritan?

The novel describes a woman’s witty journey 'Against the Grain', as she explores the antithesis to the dominant Equity and Inclusion-mythos of our time: Ayn Rand’s rational egoism. After the novelist Anna gets cancelled for being rich and classist, she finds herself socially adrift, and embarks on an ideological journey that pits selfishness against altruism. Anna’s comical explorations take her and the reader to Los Angeles, where she attempts to write an animated tv-show starring “Ayn Ram”, while she spends her dad’s money and seduces guileless men half her age.

The wicked and provocative figure Freiman describes in The Book of Ayn—the shameless, nihilistic, post-ironic woman—has become one of the main characters in post-pandemic American culture. As the edgy foil to a dominant Millennial culture that is consensus-seeking, and often vengeful of anyone who breaks the moral code, the femtroll, or the female edgelord, is mischievous, provocative, and takes joy in transgressing social taboos.

As a cultural trickster figure, the contemporary edgelord has many parallels to the decadent dandy of the late 19th century. They both rebell against a hypocritical, intolerant and often sanctimonious moral code, and like the decadent heroes Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysman, the heroine of The Book of Ayn also turns towards spirituality when her contrarian excesses fail her.

In the final section of the The Book of Ayn, broke and ideologically lost, Anna joins a commune on Lesbos that supposedly practices self-sacrificing ego-death. “The only choice left is between the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the cross,” Barbey d’Aurevilly wrote in response to Huysman’s contrarian decadence in 'Against the Grain'. With The Book of Ayn, Freiman calls for a middle path—not the way of the puritan, not the way of the edgelord, not the gun, not the cross. But a recentered shrug, a “lol no”, a rejection of all extreme discourses.

[Dave Harmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As others say this book starts out great but the second half sucks. the first half was the funniest thing ive read in a long time. by itself it is worth 5 stars but the second half (in greece) was so dull.
there were some other issues too, like characters werent quite introduced correctly leading to some name confusion and there is some sort of editing problem on page 70 where its clear something important got cut by mistake.
the prose in the first half was phenomenal. and full of good words, one word (dogoir) wasnt in wiktionary and i had to look it up and created a new entry.

Characters - 4/5
Writing quality - 6/5 then 3/5
Story/plot - 4/5

Ending - 3/5
logophilic* - very! lots of great words here
Unputdownable - no
Deeper meaning - maybe?
Suspense - no
Humor - yes!!
Memorability - high
Originality - high
readability - high
audio book? - i would not reccomend this as an audiobook
I would recommend this book to: anyone who reads lit fic or comedy.

*logophilic, word loving