Information Age

by Cora Lewis

Welcome to the zeitgeist viewed from the Manhattan desk of a shrewdly inquisitive young journalist...

An unnamed reporter covers technology, the economy, and politics in the late 2010s during a high-stakes election. As she reports the news — both on the campaign trail and remotely — her personal life becomes curiously entangled with her sources.

Told in snapshots, vignettes, and dialogue — overheard and divulged — Information Age is spare, funny, and attentive — a playful blurring of public and private life.

Praise:

"Captures the splendor and misery of being in your twenties in sly style... Lewis's gift for observation and condensation, her wryness, means that every page has that spark of recognition — in other words, the mark of truth." - Joanna Biggs, deputy editor of The Yale Review

"A subtle meditation on what can and cannot be communicated, ultimately suggesting that intimate moments are the most difficult to convey." - The New Yorker

“In Information Age, Cora Lewis’s delectable and harrowing and often very funny debut, she applies the flashing precision of a surgical tool to the material of our daily lives." - Kathryn Davis, author of Aurelia, Aurélia and Duplex

"Lewis holds up pairs of objects in a mirror, and it's our pleasure to watch as their proportions warp. A modern, delicate exercise in juxtaposition." - Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service

“Here is a writer preternaturally attuned to the grain of the world, as sensitive to assorted contemporary absurdities as she is to moments of grace… It’s a pure pleasure to spend time in Lewis’s sensibility.” - Hermione Hoby, author of Virtue and Neon in Daylight

"Information Age is compulsively readable — funny, sexy, sharp, charming. It’s about work and friendships and family and learning how to live with strangers and with yourself. I gobbled it up in one sitting." - Danielle Dutton, co-founder of Dorothy, A Publishing Project

“Incandescent… Radiating on a fiercely beating frequency of heart and truth… This is what it was like.” - Greg Jackson, author of The Dimensions of a Cave and Prodigals

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literature, American, Literary Fiction

183 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2025

Reviews

[Mitch Gulish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn’t quite like anything else I’ve read. It is pleasantly aimless in the sense that it lacks a central conflict, rather allowing tensions come and go in small doses throughout the book in much the same way that they do in everyday life. It is clever, funny, serious, and at times sexy while remaining perfectly tasteful cover to cover.

In Information Age, we are seeing the world through the narrators eyes in bits and pieces that feel carefully written to reflect the fast paced and relentlessly entertaining modern world that has been chipping away at our collective attention span. In many ways, this felt more like a commentary on life as a young adult in today’s world than a narrative piece, and I think this approach makes for an interesting read.

[Mána Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so absorbed by this narrator that I started to think like her. The flow of her life is simple yet so enticing. As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to read it all over again. This stayed with me from the description of living with roommates: “to one another, we’re gestures and remnants between subway rides and nights out and all our 9-to-5’s, plus overtime, always extending.”

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best book of 2025 i’ve read so far. it’s like reading the notes app of a genius. Cora Lewis is so gifted and awesome. mark my words she’s one to watch!!

[lehnachos ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It sounds like you’re experiencing a profound alienation from the production and dissemination of information”

This was so good and had so many good quotes. Informative and tender.

[Jacob Van Baalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a real sucker for books written in the present tense, and this is no exception. This book clips along, at times like little bits of flash fiction strung together into a book. That's a plus for me!

[Matt Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clever and witty dialogue. Formally, the novella is somewhere in between Didion and a best friend’s diary. It brought to mind the diary’s from authors that are published on the Paris Review blog. Lewis writes such sharp sentences; I had to slow down my reading to appreciate them. The ending lingered with me.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the writing style of this book. Life told in short imagery of events or feelings. She captured the angst of our mid20s, but somehow in a calming way. I now want to journal about my life in this writing style haha

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

have been chasing this book all over bookstores and finally found it. felt like it only took 20 mins to read the whole thing. do i think i enjoyed it because i am also a 20-something writer living in brooklyn? yes. do i think i would have enjoyed it if those things were not true? perhaps less but still yes. nothing really happens but i don’t mind that. fun and sometimes moving to take in the world as someone else does—all their noticings, the little comments/billboards/whatever we all hear/see every day but that are actually profound when you Think About Them. good tiny little book with good spare writing

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

so perfectly mundane yet captivating! I aspire to write about life in this way…thank you cammi for the gift <3

[Clara Jergins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is just so exactly like Substacks that are so exactly like very well written diary entries and I just eat them up like candy bc I love gossip

[Deb Pines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured in one day this smart, witty, concise and somewhat-haunting tale of a 20-something SWF reporter’s life in modern-day Brooklyn.

The reporter goes unnamed. But she tells us she’s a “half-decade in now, at the online outlet” where she works. “I can summarize in no-time-flat the day’s virtual controversy or substantive outrage,” she says. “When I do it just right, hundreds of thousands of people click.”

A pro, no question. The narrator’s pithy, Metropolitan Diary-caliber descriptions of city personalities, at work and play, along with conversation snippets, are very fun.

But when she turns her dispassionate, reporterly gaze on herself — her sex (with boyfriends and flings), takeout meals, family visits, road trips, roommates — it can feel Lena Dunham “Girls”-caliber sad, like the musings of an aimless, commitment-shy womanchild. When the narrator is asked at one point why she failed to take notes on a reporting trip, she wonders aloud: “Self-sabotage?”

Typical of 20-somethings throughout history? Or today’s Gen Z-ers failing to buy into what they see as corny, old-school values? Or just a snapshot of the well-drawn, memorable narrator in Cora Lewis’ unputdownable INFORMATION AGE?

[krezzia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Super short read but took me forever to finish bc it was so boring that I never wanted to read it.

Was really disappointed in this book (i found that i disagreed with majority of the existing reviews out there but couldn’t figure out why) It was rlly odd, the pacing was not my favorite, the writing style was all simple sentences (almost all chapters being 2 pages MAX). I kept waiting for something interesting to happen but nothing ever did. I enjoyed some of the takeaways and simple things that happened in the main character’s life, but genuinely was just too flat to sustain anything super meaningful from this. Not to say I can’t enjoy the simple and mundane in books, but this was just not it. :P

[Meera]

I’m not doing ratings anymore. I don’t on letterboxd so idk why I still was here.

Anyway I loved this. I’m on the M heading to Kat’s, tipsy after dinner with friends from college, and the ending made me want to cry. In a good way. A comforting read — very witty, very fun, very real. Made me feel less alone somehow. Love

[tessa s · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clara said "This book is just so exactly like Substacks that are so exactly like very well written diary entries and I just eat them up like candy bc I love gossip", and I agree.

The book is both mundane and overwritten, but I couldn't help but keep reading.

[Jasmin Montano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic

[Anjali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We think the point of a kid is to grow up because it does grow up," my father tells me by the sandbox. "But the point of a kid is to play. If you always looked to the end, the point of life would be death."

some beautiful vignettes, particularly around the pace of life and some lovely prose that was reminiscent of didion. not jaw-droppingly profound but a fast and light read. read in one day.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only words that come to mind for this novella are: elegant, and boring. I think it was written well, but I just… didn’t care.

[Hayley Taggart · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novella on womanhood, living and working in nyc, and making a life for oneself.
The style of interconnect vignettes was so interesting to follow and the prose just flowed

[Michelle Brant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up from the staff picks at greenlight. Like reading someone’s diary (in a good way). Had the vignette / dispassionate quality of Rachel Cusk but in a way that worked for me.

For some reason I thought this book would be more like “nobody is talking about this”, which I guess it is in form, but in content it ended up being a portrait of being in your 20s in a very specific time in NY. Made me feel a little nostalgic (and compassionate) for a time I generally look back on and roll my eyes at.

[Fern · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a special independently published book.

ugh. ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. this hit terribly close to home. at times quietly heartbreaking. a series of losses, the violence of the mundane.

i share too much in common with this narrator. too close to home, too timely...

too apt for the scope of my right now.

yet comforting in its relatability. so many of our twenties (your twenties, my twenties) look the same.

maybe we can learn to carry our twenties a little more lightly. hopefully we make it to the other side (our thirties) whole...

i would kill to have cora lewis's wit.

[D]

Very charming work of autofiction. Some might call it plotless, though I think that term’s not being used right these days—there’s not a central narrative arc, but plenty happens, and the text is fragmented and open (what the poets call parataxis), leaving you to find your own meanings and centers of gravity—I was intrigued by the narrators abortion and by all the scenes of her journalism job, which made journalism sound just as bullshitty as anything I’ve done. Her life outside it seems idyllic—ripe pluots, strings of charming and good looking lovers, tons of friends and party invites… I started getting fomo for a literary life that looked like this one; it almost felt like Instagram snapshots of a millennial (Gen z?) life in Brooklyn. She’s got a wonderful ear for dialogue. lovely book and delighted to see Joyland expand into book publishing!!!

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

very Writers&Lovers

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Needs a little more MEAT

[JR · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I fantasize often, especially when alone. There are pictures of the future—projections—but they’re blurry. Someone pulls me closer when I stir. Someone starts the dishes as I blow out long-stemmed candles. I can’t make out his face. Someone has been with me for years, the hard part behind us.”

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cora Lewis, along with Rachel Cusk and Katie Kitamura, is one of my favorite authors now. Although this is memoir, not fiction. All the more inspirational. This entire book is like an answer to my often asked question, “have you experienced a major or a minor New York miracle recently?”

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at McNally Jackson Books in New York and was intrigued by the cover, synopsis, physical size of the book, and first chapter. So I decided to purchase it and read it.

What an interesting, unique, and witty book. It follows a young reporter in her 20s navigating work, love, friends, and life decisions. It’s written over the course of several years in the present tense, and its prose is a series of vignettes, mini-scenes, and slices of life, representative of her job as a reporter of anything that drops on her desk. There were also a ton of clever one-liners littered throughout this novella, many of which I made note of.

Saul tells me variations of “life” now going. His favourite is “the sum of functions by which death is resisted.”

The story also read as vacant and matter-of-fact, yet poetic to me, which is a style I absolutely love.

“I don’t dry dishes… That’s what God is for.”

September. I’ve been taking myself for walks like a dog.

I think the thesis of this book can be generalized through this line, and I appreciated the overall meaning of the book.

What the AI makers may not care to learn is that good writing’s the exception to the statistical norm. It doesn't revert to the meaning. The “most likely next word” is almost always cliché, language, so familiar. It's a void of information.

Overall, a very interesting read, and I’ll definitely be revisiting this book in the future, especially the tons of underlines I made!

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up out of familiarity with Joyland magazine, curious to see they’ve crossed a threshold into bewk publishing.

I like this writer’s simple method of scene-setting, which is to place a title slide of “Cherry picking.” or “Dinner with mother.” at the outset of new situations. Our time is minced, why mince it to bits?

Although I felt there were too many scenes ending in winks or one-liners, in general this book cohered more than others sold as “told-in-vignettes,” a core I’ve become more than a little wary of. I was never frustrated or distracted by the decision-making /cinematography, which is where the loosely-connected-vignette approach kinda poops its own pants for me. This is still a linear(ish)ly told story. And the connections can be quite clear. The passage of time is very naturalistic throughout…Maybe this belongs in the well-sewn-quilt-of-vignettes category?

As a side note, Part Five stood out as independently excellent, as a relatable, destabilizing event launches the narrator into a bizarre new research project involving an experimental analog to Earth. This section ended way too prematurely, maybe in the intentionally lifelike sense of something ending just as soon as it got exciting again. Again!

I’ll also note that I curtailed my NYC book bias for the duration of this read and for this brief review. Although my rug is vast and heavy, some good things still slip under it

[Alex Beige · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to talk about the best thing about this book--because its just the prose. The sharpness of it, every word just falls into place, Information Age has a kind of poetics that's hard to name. Because it's not "that" kind of poetic--not flowery, not adornment. It's just really fucking good.

What IS much easier to talk about is the structure--like interspersing of long and short chapters, and the pacing, and the precision of one paragraph describing one situation that hits like a truck. No fanfare or punchline needed. It's just really fucking good.

And that's even before mentioning the narrative itself. Something about the voice of the narrators oscillates between complete intimacy and the calm perspective of a journalist--it's a joy to read, and a pleasure to get a look into the narrator's mind. Not their "world", but their mind--the mechanisms of their cognition, the kind of dignified metaphors or anecdotes that build upon one another to create a complete picture--that's what this book gives you. What a TREAT.

Can't wait for my mid-30s, I guess!

[pranavv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to undervalue this book I think

Not the best book ever, and definitely an artifact of the time but I think that’s the point when you call a book Information Age.

Particularly interesting as Lewis was previously a writer at Buzzfeed. Information in this book is structured much like that of our modern era—quick, succinct, maybe somewhat lifeless at times.

That being said, the author does a great job of using her charm and wit to make all these punchy remarks that other books of the time often do (annoyingly so) but never to this degree and mastery.

At the end of the day, this feels human, maybe disappointingly, but I found it deeply reflective of the current state of the world.

This really toes the line between working and not working. And maybe while writing this all, it seems like it’s working. But also, maybe I’ve just been thinking all of these big thoughts

[Ella Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never read something like this before, I loved it! The fragmented snippets into the protagonists life did take some getting used to but I loved the witty, insightful, cutting commentary. There’s a lot to dissect considering it’s so short and the author really makes it so every line is important and vital. Information Age really captures the ephemeral, often crazy nature of your 20’s without it feeling overdone or contrived and I’m sure every 20 year old can see themselves in this book - I certainly did! Considering we dont even know the protagonists name or age, it’s easy to connect and empathise with her which just goes to show how compelling and well-written Information Age is.