Surveys

by Natasha Stagg

"One day, I was not famous, the next day, I was almost famous and the temptation to go wide with that and reject my past was too great. When I was legit famous, it was hard to tell when the change had occurred... If I had been born famous, the moment I would have started engaging in social media, I would have seen this fame, not the rise of it. But first I saw the low numbers, and later, the high ones." -- from Surveys

Wryly mirroring the classic, female coming-of-age narrative, Natasha Stagg's debut traces a few months in the life of Colleen, a twenty-three-year-old woman with almost no attachments or aspirations for her life. Working at an unsatisfying mall job in Tucson, Colleen sleepwalks through depressing office politics and tiresome one-night stands in a desultory way, becoming fully alive only at night when she's online. Colleen attains ambiguous Internet stardom when she's discovered by Jim, a semi-famous icon of masculinity and reclusiveness.

When Colleen quits her job and moves to meet Jim in Los Angeles, she immediately falls in love and begins a new life of whirlwind parties and sponsored events. The pair's relationship, launched online, makes them the Scott and Zelda of their generation, and they tour the country, cashing in on the buzz surrounding their romance. But as their fame expands, Colleen's jealousy grows obsessive.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, The United States Of America, Internet, 21st Century

176 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2016

Reviews

[Allie · Rating 1 out of 5]

i need to stop reading literary fiction about solipsistic white girls who hate eating food & have boyfriends who treat them badly & have meaningless sex with older men because of Self Loathing & there's rampant fatphobia as shorthand for Dumb American Greed or whatever & it's all a commentary on Consumerism and Millennial Culture and The Recession or other shit because i hated this, i hated my year of rest & relaxation, and i hate you too can have a body like mine so perhaps it's just time to admit this is a genre that is Not For Me!

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) At the start of Surveys, Colleen is conducting market research surveys in a mall in Arizona; 80 pages later she has become famous, part of an internet power couple. All the solidity and cosiness of the early chapters is lost, replaced with a cold dark empty feeling like being pulled into a vortex, and I read the book quickly, filled with restless anxiety by the transient scenes of parties and hotel rooms, drugs and broken glass and jealous fights.

The specifics of Colleen and Jim’s ‘online fame’ are vague, which is a smart move. Surveys was published in 2016 and is set earlier (though in several ways it is remarkably similar to the 2022 novel Aesthetica), but Natasha Stagg’s aphoristic sentences make it feel something close to timeless. At first, Colleen talks about ‘posts’ and ‘followers’ but never the platform. Yet as the story progresses, these details become more explicit as the details of Colleen’s narrative, and the nature of her relationship with Jim, become hazier. Fame and money are tangible; everything else is mutable. There’s no true reflection or realisation at the end of Surveys, but nothing in the book feels as stable, as real, as the survey-taking, the Tucson mall – which is perhaps a message in itself.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is TE-DI-OUS. Like many other readers, I was fascinated by the unglamorous life Colleen lives at the beginning. I know few millennials who weren't working shitty jobs at 23, and her whole life in Tucson is carved out in such loving detail with such real characters, until it's like Stagg thought, "what if we randomly made this girl famous and never explained why?" I could never suspend my disbelief that there is absolutely no way a nobody-turned-internet-star would be flying around the world on a DJ tour with no worries of money simply for being internet famous, because I know internet famous people, and most of them don't make shit (it's almost like Stagg has never heard of the all-too-familiar to millennials job description "paid in exposure"). I was also happy to read Tucson Colleen's complaints, because Tucson Colleen is real, but I could not be bothered to give a shit about Randomly Internet Famous World Traveler Colleen's internal monologue. Boo hoo, another randomly internet famous girl your poorly developed boyfriend fucked is more famous than you in a better way. Who cares? I'm sure Colleen's narcissism is meant to be tedious, I'm sure no character but her is really supposed to matter, but she's not an interesting enough character for that to be worth a whole book.
Most of the time I read this, I couldn't help but feel like Colleen's friend Kevin who yelled at her over the phone near the end: "Get. The fuck. Over yourself." This whole book could stand to follow that advice, honestly. This book is like if the Zac Efron movie We Are Your Friends switched genders and joined an MFA program. This book tells me nothing new. I have heard this story so many times before, and as a millennial, it makes me understand complaints about (white) millennials. (We sure as hell can't get over our own mundane-ass, cynical, self-involved sadness, huh?) If you want this sort of thing, read Sheila Heti or Walter Scott instead. There are so many worthwhile, similar experiences you could have that aren't reading this book.

[Tomas Markevičius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Natasha’s writing is clever and sharp. The way this novel is written perfectly defines the protagonist (twenty-three-year-old Colleen from Tuscon, AZ) as well as everyone in her social circle. As a result of her writing style, quite often it seems like the story has gaps in time, some events happen very randomly, characters in the story (and Colleen’s life) come and go, and there’s this general feeling of everything in her and around her being very disjointed. And it balances on the edge of feeling almost annoying. Even the whole story of Colleen getting famous and what happens after that seems bizarre, not quite logical. But I feel like that is exactly the goal of the writer because the novel is written from a perspective of a person who is very shallow, has no aspirations in her life and is obsessed with her own fame and self-destructive jealousy.

It’s a sharp take on social media and internet fame and a great piece of contemporary writing. But even though I understand and justify the stylistic approach of the book, in terms of the story itself it left me wanting more.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book about a deadpan girl who becomes Internet famous, once her blog/other social media accounts start tracking her real-life relationship with another Internet celebrity. We never get to read anything about what she actually publishes, which was a relief to me after the long tedious "blog" excerpts in books like "Americanah." The first half of the book is kind of like a mumblecore narration of her life as a mall worker at some kind survey company; then things take a very abrupt shift when out of nowhere we learn that she has this alternate life on the Internet, and she is planning to move to L.A. to meet up with her online celebrity lover.

I feel like if this book was critiqued in a fiction workshop there would be a lot of people who would argue that the Internet celebrity lover should have been introduced MUCH earlier, because he really does just come out of nowhere and it's a bit jarring. Still, it kind of works? In general the book's plot is dependent on those kinds of weird little twists and I guess it will either work for you or it won't.

Also (spoiler alert) the ending did not involve the protagonist realizing the errors of her Internet-dependent ways, which I also appreciated.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

If not for finding this on my daughter’s bookshelf while being trapped in Coronavirus quarantine, I would not have finished this. It read as if every other chapter somehow got lost once the protagonist left her shitty mall job. Such a waste of my time no matter how bored I was.

[Devan Diaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

bitches love being online

[Hilda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jag skulle nog ge den 3,5 stjärnor om det gick... historian var intressant, med kändisskap och internets påverkan på psyket i fokus men jag fattade aldrig riktigt tycke för huvudkaraktären Coleen, vilken kanske var meningen men det gjorde det svårt för mig att bli engagerad. Historian är spännande men på nått sätt blir det tråkigt när allt vara händer karaktären och inget är ett riktigt beslut hon tar själv. Jag vet ej, det är Natashas debut så jag har överseende och jag ser fram emot att läsa nått annat hon skrivit. Jag håller med alla recentioner jag gillade, som en debut är boken före sin tid och lite year of rest and realaxation. Gav mig även lite tripprapporter eller vad jag kan tänka mig dagarna dagarna osv ger för vibb, med en narcissitisk huvudkaraktär som faller för hollywood.

[Kia]

I thought I would like this book but I didn’t. In fact, I disliked it so much that I kept picking up new books to read so I wouldn’t have to finish this one, and now I am really behind on my 2021 reading challenge.

[Dawnelle Wilkie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's like Natasha Stagg decided to "Write A Book About Fame" but didn't have enough to say so decided to just slap two different narratives together to try and create a cogent point and "Say Something Important." It didn't work.

The first half was a grim, but highly engaging, account of post-college soul-crushing mall work and existential loneliness. It's bleak, funny, and fascinating. The characters are fleshed out, the story-lines make sense and the reader is engaged. Why? Good writing (otherwise known as "hard work" if you're a writer).

The second half centered around a barely explained on-line relationship that results in the sort of corporate-endorsed trashy celebrity status given to internet "stars." Stagg never showed us anything of the beginning of the relationship, instead choosing the refrain "you can look it up on-line, it's all there in print - forever." Except... this is a work of fiction so no, it's not on the internet and pretending your backstory is solidly fleshed out elsewhere is insanely lazy writing! I didn't give two shits about the characters or their relationship because Stagg didn't earn it.

I would have loved 300 pages about Colleen (who works at the mall and experiments with sex work and does too many drugs and has crazy neighbors) but Colleen ("I'm really famous on the Internet" professional party-er who spends all her time obsessing over her cheating ex)? NO. NO. NO.

Overall, one of the most frustrating books I've read in ages.

[Sabrina Espaillat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because it was mentioned by Charlie XCX in an interview.

I give this book a solid 3.5 - absolutely worth a read but not profound.

“Surveys” is a mix of “coming‑of‑age + social critique.” It doesn’t settle into moral judgments, nor offer resolutions. Instead, this novel holds up a mirror to the present digital age. the hunger for visibility, the ways the self becomes project, and how emotional life is mediated through screens, followers, and performance.
For readers interested in identity, media studies, or the psychology of online life, it's an absolute must.

What works well in this book is relevance: The novel captures contemporary anxieties around social media, influencers, identity, and what authenticity means online. It feels very “of the moment.” The atmosphere and tone bring a good sense of emotional texture; boredom, longing, glamour attached to emptiness. Colleen captures the pull and cost of visibility. She is a sort of mirror to the generation that grew up in/with the Internet: both critical of and seduced by its promises.

I do have some big issues with this novel in particular. There seems to be a lack of plot or tension. The entire novel is anticlimactic with the narrative feeling disjointed; the rising action is less dramatic than observational.
The writing style is inconsistent. At some points the voice is self aware, sometimes diaristic, sometimes ranting on society as a whole. This made it hard for me to immerse myself in the first person prose.
While much is shown about the performance of relationships (online/offline), the novel doesn’t always delve deep enough into the underlying emotional stakes. We don’t see how relationships (or characters) develop in this novel.

I believe maybe that was the point? The internet stunting development and keeping the next generation in some sort of feedback loop?

I get the message. It’s alright. If you’re looking for a dramatic closure, this ain’t it.

[Lindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My opinion of this book changed every twenty pages. If nothing else, it is very smartly written, not so much in what it says, but in what is left unsaid between the lines.

So it's set in the American southwest in 2011 and that's important because in 2011 there are no non-minimum wage jobs for recent college graduates, the word 'hipster' has just lost all meaning, and the term 'social media influencer' has just started being something people aspire to. The plot is that a young woman attempts to navigate this.

Often I read an article, or watch a video, or see references to, about some Drama (TM) that's happening between internet celebrities, and after reading the article or watching the video, I know all about their drama but I'm typically left with three burning questions: Who tf are these people? What do they do/why are they famous? And who tf are their legions of fans? It's also bizarre in that everyone assumes the consumer of the article/video/whatever already knows the life history, biases, and general unreliability of everyone involved. Through short (blog post-esque?) chapters, lies by omission, and shifting timelines Surveys conveys the strangeness of this. In other words, the narrator might be shallow but the text is rather complex.

[Joel Curry · Rating 4 out of 5]

First things first - I really enjoy Natasha Stagg. As a story, this book is not the most compelling & feels quite disjointed at times, but perhaps that is the point of it.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mall workers of the world, unite!

[Livi · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Ylenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are plot holes really that big of a deal?

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sharp take on social media celebrity, the psychology behind it, and the story of how it's become this bizarre thing in the millennial cohort. This is all told through a novel of course, and well done in my opinion. Like posts for social media accounts, the chapters are short, sometimes vague, and describe experiences as they happen and one off memories. As someone who was once enamored over the power of reach through an anonymous Twitter account, and experienced a short lived obsession with trying to reach the status of well known "anons", I found this book fascinating. Once you realize that your normal and mundane life can be enhanced through a life on social media, you become addicted. You start wanting to meet these people that have a huge amount of followers and have reached a sort of celebrity on social media in their own right. The thing is, you meet them and realize they're just like you: normal, a little shy, and want to be liked. As the novel points out, this life isn't sustainable, and is all surface. My only complaint about this book is that it wasn't longer.

[Cassie (book__gal) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve followed Natasha Stagg’s writing for a while now because not many people these days can interrogate culture quite like she does. Surveys is her debut novel and it acts as a time capsule of the emptiness that will come to define the 2010s. You know, coming of age online, deadpan millennials, modern fame. What’s unique about Stagg’s writing though is it does not condescend the millennial experience. The writing comes across as brutally honest to me, but never patronizing. There’s a lot to read in between the lines here, about fame, self-obsession and by extension, self-curation, and loneliness. I liked the contrast between a character that appears to be surface-level unlikable but yet is famous, assumingly, for being herself, for being likable to a mass audience. Stagg just published a new book, titled Sleeveless, that I picked up yesterday; looking forward to getting into it ⚡️

[Kristin Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The prose is easy to digest but gaps in time leave something to be desired. The episodic moments we experience in Colleen's life through her own eyes seem vivid and authentic, but also intentionally disjointed. This disrupted nature echoes the disruptive elements Colleen has chose to surround herself with in this moment of infamy. Yet there is too much misunderstood and confused about how one scenario moved forward to the next. At times, it does feel that she is not the same character.

[Gus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Idk if this was truly 5 stars but I want to give something 5 stars and actually this is 5. Everything about this book frightened me about ugly parts of myself. It was unpleasant but also very funny. I don't have the book with me so I can't pull some fav quotes but many times the accuracy and clarity in Colleen's narration of the online or whatever else floored me.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

First act I was like "How did this book not get a major publisher?" Second act I was like "Oh, it's taking a more experimental path, that's all." Third act I was like "I can't go on I can't go on I'll go on." Really incisive look at the shit work most college grads are doing these days, but then an attempt to critique social media mores that just goes off the rails.

[Acacia Irving · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book how can i explain this book. I think going into it you need to know only two things.
1. Colleen is far more honest then many people can handle
2. This book is not like anything i've read.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful and surreal little book.

[Kelly Twardziak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this title on a list on Electric Lit about books about fame/social media. As someone who spent their adolescence on YouTube and still has a fondness and cultural curiosity about influencers/YouTubers today, I thought this book was written for me. While there were some moments of prose and insight that I liked and founded interesting, I found most of the book confusing and a bit of a let down. (Spoilers below)

I wanted to know the specifics of what Colleen and Jim did online that got them famous. I wanted to see what they were wearing and what the parties were like. I didn't understand why Colleen was so jealous of Lucinda, who Colleen described as "just like her but better," because I didn't know what Colleen was doing online in the first place to conceptualize how Lucinda could be doing it better. I was frustrated that so much about the story was about Colleen's relationship with Jim because we barely saw any of it. We didn't get to read about their online interactions before they met IRL and we barely got to see what they were like together before tour when their relationship got rocky. I wanted to care about this pairing, but I felt my interest in them wasn't earned because I didn't get to read about their dynamic. I'll admit I'm often too easy on less-than-stellar partners in books, so if I was given any romantic scenes between Jim/Colleen, I probably would've rooted for them. But we were given bread crumbs and it frustrated me.

It also felt unclear to me what Jim and Lucinda's relationship was; were they exes whom Jim had cheated on Colleen with, was it a one-night stand? Questions like this sum up my primary problems with this novel that it was too abstract. I wanted details to be able to understand and empathize with the characters, but the reader was given very little context and made the story's very intriguing concept feel quite hollow.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I drank the rest of Sheila's wine, looking up the beginnings of Jim and my relationship, crying, turning on the TV, muting it, playing music, putting on a robe, pacing the room just to try that out. I filled the tub with water but I didn't get in. I curled around my computer, searching for all the things I'd seen a million times. The views were not growing as steadily, but they were growing, and would always grow, never diminish. Jim was one of those people who's so good at making it seem like his only interest in the Internet was the Internet itself. How interesting it is, as a thing. But of course this is self-interest, and my relationship with it has always been far more transparent, and he said he got that, and liked it about me. I liked that he got it and liked it, and that he could tell I got him and that he wasn't ashamed. What we got was that there were all these unwritten codes, that every message, because it was coded, was sitting on a mountain of meaning. Literally, everything is code and coded, but on top of that, coded into a context, online. Showing a circuit board look and MIDI-style sound felt like less code, like baring the bones. But these aesthetic choices were cluttering up the streamlining of the universe, not minimalizing it. We were asking about art and representation, and about the modern notion of a man and a woman devoted to each other. We were dropping in U-turn signs on everyone else's roads, smiling at each other, driving forward."

[Bryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel begins with the protagonist working at a mall in Arizona, and that part I absolutely loved, just because something in Stagg's writing absolutely evoked the essence of mallness for me -- the pleasure-pain of the sterility and promise and colours and lights and the absolute deadness, the thing that I feel reading about mallwave or remembering my own mall-focused teenage years and how differently the experience reads now.

The book moves on, though, to LA, to a world tour, to the protagonist experiencing social media fame for something never spoken or explained, to some kind of work which is left deliberately vague, and that is where it lost me -- I have never been someone who follows celebrities on social media or tracks the fashion world or understands who the Kardashians are (Star Trek aliens?) or why Paris Hilton is someone people care about. I am not saying this with judgement, it is just not where my interests are, but I think what Stagg is drawing from is the inside of that world, the weird bubble of modern celebrity and being famous for being famous and all these things and it went places I did not have enough information to follow. I am glad I read it and hope to read her more recent book of essays now that the library system is becoming more available again.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surveys by Natasha Stagg is solipsistic in the best way. It reminded me a lot of Halle Butler’s The New Me, but with faster pacing and more of (or any existence of) an actual plot. It’s a quick read that can be read in one or two sittings, but the narrator’s voice is likely to stick with you long after you put it down. I was also interested in reading this one because the author used to work at my old job right before me and I was getting her mail for a solid six months so I was curious (nosy) about her.
I know the 20-something, listless, attractive woman with some sort of substance issue and a bad relationship has been done to death, but this felt fresh (though it was published in 2016). It is about a woman with all those descriptors – in this case, Colleen, a 23-year-old woman working a 9-5 at a mall survey center in Tucson, AZ. It did take me a while to get into this book, and I worried it was going to be another whiney millennial story (my favorite genre, lol), BUT it takes a turn just past the halfway point when Colleen becomes internet famous. The reason for her media stardom centers around her relationship with Jim, whom she meets online and the whole internet watches as they fall in love (kind of Black Mirror-y vibes) and become America’s overnight sweethearts. This book is not for everyone as it’s difficult to engage with, but I enjoyed it and you might too if you liked The New Me / My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

[F9 · Rating 2 out of 5]

lol when i turn the page n suddenly she is an influencer i was like wtf . i tried to excuse the lack of context in most of the novel as being similar to the way one might use their imagination to fill the gaps in an influencers story while scrolln thru their page lookin at their pix. but i think tht is a stretch . i was hoping for some alex from target vibes .

i wonder if natasha stagg n taylor swift share any cleb ex bfs.


i liked the set up but ultimately i felt like in the middle of writing this book the author hit the Bar with a friend had some drinks nd was talkin abt this book like wrestlin w it n then was like wat if suddenly the protagonist is famous n I dnt set it up or say anything abt it.

honestly it reminds me of tiktokers that Reality Shift into timelines when they r famous. when I think about it like this i like the book More

like a loser teenager in loserville USA tht has a crush on diplo and then fantasizes about being diplos famous GF and being treated like hottie garbage bae

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book

[Siggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first 50 ish pages of this book I was hooked her writing style was good and her descriptions of mundane suburban life were really intelligent and well written then out of no where with very little set up she became famous for blog post barely remember them mentioning and read this book in two sittings in one day lol. The book then became tedious and my interest was lost it became more and more a blog post of my night out getting drunk and my boyfriends annoying. There’s a good book in here somewhere which is frustrating as this feels like rough draft. The plot is believable I guess but there’s no setup that makes us understand it or care about her fame. Sadly this is the first semiotext(e) book out of the 6 I had read before this to thoroughly disappoint me. Natasha stagg can be good writer and is one but this is unfinished and just an overall mess. I would like to read her reviews or something else cause I feel like she might work von there with shorter form but this wasn’t that long tho tbh