Something New Under the Sun

by Alexandra Kleeman

A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR
A LIT HUB BEST BOOK OF 2021
‘Magnificent and stunning’ Jeff VanderMeer
‘An immense achievement. Masterful and merciless’ Olivia Sudjic
‘Expertly conjures California noir filtered through the ambient and not-so-ambient apocalypse’ Emma Cline

Patrick Hamlin has come from New York to Hollywood to see his novel be adapted for the screen, but why does he get the strange feeling that the film isn’t even being made, that it’s just a smokescreen for something else?

Troubled starlet Cassidy Carter is due to play the female lead in the film, but why doesn’t she seem to care what happens on set? Does she know something he doesn’t? Or can she help him get to the truth?

His wife Alison has taken their daughter Nora to a commune in upstate New York to mourn the destruction of nature, but is she safe there or is the Earthbridge community a cult exploiting her anxieties?

When fires rage through the Californian landscape, how is it that a certain type of tiny pale blue flower remains sweetly blue, not singed by the flames?

And what is the truth about WAT-R, the synthetic water everyone drinks out in LA? Is it really as harmless as everyone says?

Ablaze with vivid, unforgettable images and smouldering with elegiac menace, Something New Under the Sun is an unmissable novel for our present moment – a bold exploration of capitalism, corruption and environmental catastrophe, and as entertaining, alluring and beautiful as it is devastating.

'An urgent novel about our very near future and a deeply addictive pleasure . . . Kleeman is a phenomenon, one of the most brilliant and gifted writers at work today’ Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Literary Fiction, Climate Change Fiction, Climate Change, Audiobook

368 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2021

Reviews

[Alexandra Kleeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong effort by a woman living in the blood and guts and compromise of the world!

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exciting book - exciting and strange, an eco-parable mashed up with a detective thriller, with sci-fi elements and hollywood pastiche mixed in - it's often funny, with a scary, sharp analysis of contemporary environmental issues lurking under the surface at all times.

It's like: Inherent Vice meets an Alfred Hayes Hollywood novel.

Keep your eye out for it.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought Alexandra Kleeman might be a genius when I read You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine; now I know she is.

Patrick Hamlin is a writer whose novel Elsinore Lane is being made into a film featuring Cassidy Carter, one-time child star of Kassi Keene: Kid Detective, now halfway to being washed up and better known as a tabloid darling. Patrick has been given a token role as production assistant, something he quickly realises gives him no say in what the studio do with the content. With his wife and daughter cut off from civilisation at a ‘nature retreat’, Patrick is marooned in the neon sprawl of LA, watching helplessly as the material of his book – a personal, elegiac story about the loss of his father – is distorted into a bizarrely plotless horror movie.

All this plays out against the backdrop of something that gradually reveals itself as a five-minutes-into-the-future setting. In California, tap water is a thing of the past. Instead there’s a privately supplied, supposedly chemically identical, completely ubiquitous, artificial substitute called WAT-R. Patrick is rattled when he sees a group of disorientated people being shepherded into a green van; later, he learns they are victims of a new phenomenon known as ‘Random-Onset Acute Dementia’. When he decides to investigate the links between WAT-R, the new disease and the movie, who better to help than the woman who played super-sleuth Kassi Keene?

Something New Under the Sun is less weird fiction than You Too, but no less weird. The dialogue is often absurd, with sentences like ‘avoiding loss is impossible in a world that struggles to conjure even the basic sense of presence’ thrown out in casual conversation. People don’t talk like this, and it works so well – it knows its own absurdity, exists on its own plane. As in her debut, Kleeman is breathtakingly adept at taking symbols of capitalism, of celebrity, of consumer culture and warping them beyond all recognition, in doing so revealing the horror that lay beneath the surface all along.

The perspective switches throughout, often without warning, from Patrick to Cassidy and away from them altogether. It’s like a filmmaking technique itself – like a drone hovering next to the characters and then, bored, wandering away to pan through the empty rooms of a house, to zoom in on the movements of animals and insects in the scrubland. The land is just as alive as the people – indeed, so is the WAT-R; so are the highways and air-con units. The setting is a triumph, simultaneously fascinating and hellish. The style is unique: trippy, dreamy, undoubtedly odd, yet somehow really humane; against all odds, it doesn’t feel detached from reality at all.

If I had to compare it to anything... I suppose the mixture of a writer isolated from his family and hints of conspiracy, partly communicated through episodes of a TV show, reminded me of Red Pill, but god, this just does everything a hundred times better than Red Pill (and I liked that book! But Something New is more successful for me precisely because it leans into the weirdness of its weirdest aspects and lets that spin out in every direction rather than trying to tie everything back to events the reader will recognise). It could also be the eccentric sibling of We Play Ourselves, with its hallucinatory LA setting, and its blurring of reality as a film is made, and all its ideas and energy. I liked to imagine Patrick and Cassidy nearly, but not quite, crossing paths with Cass and Caroline.

Only Kleeman could have written this, I’m convinced. Only she could have written something with these themes, make it as earnest as it is knowing, and not have it turn into a dreary sermon. A film industry satire/cautionary climate change novel/conspiracy thriller/near-future science fiction, a bizarre, wild, colourful odyssey through a version of reality that seems to be melting, returning the trappings of modernity to the primordial ooze... It’s the best, most ingenious book I have read this year so far, and I’ll be surprised if I find anything to match it. As it turns out, the title is wholly apt.

I received an advance review copy of Something New Under the Sun from the publisher through Edelweiss.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Book Clubbed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley & Hogarth for the ARC.

A fun, genre-pulverizing romp around LA that draws easy parallels to Pynchon, Chinatown, and, in my opinion, The Big Lebowski. In short, there are many ***characters*** in Hollywood, and those characters like getting into bizarre shenanigans. In a generalizing manner, genre fiction focuses on the action, while literary fiction lingers in the consequences of the action--the reflection, the emotional turmoil, and how it builds or destroys relationships. Under that categorization, this book is certainly literary fiction, more concerned with the emotional interior than surface-level tension. This isn't an admonishment, but just a heads up for potential readers.


I found the characters aggravating at first, and worried that the cast of characters would never rise above hysterical versions of Hollywood tropes, scurrying about for cheap laughs. However, the main relationship won me over, and Kleeman kept developing the characters with a natural knack for describing the emotional interior. Once we set the characters in motion, the (admittedly small) moments of adventure find a new balance with the character reflections. I loved the tie-in with Cassidy's previous show, Kassi Keene: Kid Detective, I loved how WAT-R had monopolized the hydration market in California, and I loved the mysterious disease that underpinned the dark thrust of the story.


I also enjoyed the role that nature plays throughout the novel, as characters do their best to reconnect to nature, even as the environment grows more hostile. Although Kleeman likes showing off her writing skills a little too much in these sections, they are nevertheless poignant, and uncomfortably timely given our current drought and wildfires. They also appear to be markers of time. As in, certain aspects of nature ground us to the incomprehensibly long history of Earth (at least incomprehensible to our small human lives). At other times, nature turns without warning, acting as a force of destruction or a locus of change enacted by humans, a reminder that the natural world, set in its patterns, can easily be disrupted by us.

[Mohammed Al-Thani · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will say this, Alexandra Kleeman's idea is highly original, one that feels urgent in these uncertain times. In addition, the book started strong, real strong, with an engaging premise that seemed to be going/leading somewhere or something. As an avid film buff, writer and admirer of California (three things combined in this novel), I thought this was going to be my thing. But boy was I wrong.

What was achieved?

Endless monologues that don’t go anywhere (or maybe I was missing something); a writing style that consists of long passages and over-detailed sentences that don't add up anything other than to fill in the word count; cardboard characters that lack depth and any necessities (especially Horseshoe and Arm); a storyline that tries to fit in so much yet achieves so little (and some are saying its a subtle thriller? y’all are drunk). Stopped more than halfway through. Don’t want to force myself or waste my time reading something I don’t like.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book lit my brain on fire. It's anxious, unsettling, full of dread and disaster--but so thrilling in its guts and scope and inventiveness that it left me feeling weirdly cleansed and creatively inspired. It's somehow...almost...hopeful? Like in a nihilistic way? Now I have to read everything Kleeman has published.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere between 3 - 3.5 rounded down

It's frustrating that I have to give a rating to this one: at times I loved it, and the writing and the feeling the book evoked in me felt new and exciting - like I was experiencing something truly different and unique, and other times I felt like I was just missing something.

I think it's best to go into this mostly blind but expecting a book which is almost uncanny, cli-fi which also feels like a detective novel at times... and like a scathing indictment of modern society at others. I won't even try to summarise the plot here, but suffice it to say this is a book which is principally occupied with examining the ramifications of water becoming a scarce commodity and wildfires a daily reality. But it's also a satire of Hollywood and modern life in contemporary America.

Overall I enjoyed the ride this book took me on (it's very different from anything I've read in quite some time), and as other reviewers have noted the prose is memorable. But I failed to 'get' the wider point Kleeman was trying to make with the novel, and I feel like things lost their way (and were lost on me) a bit in the last 25% or so. If this sounds at all intriguing I'd recommend checking it out. Kleeman is an exciting writer, and I'll definitely be checking out her other books (You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Intimations: Stories).

Thank you Netgalley and 4th Estate for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A stunning book. An immaculately, intricately, eccentrically written, idiosyncratic soft-s-f, near-future, light-dystopian, quirky pseudo-mystery novel describing the ennui, outrage, absurdity, and maturity of an old-before-her-time child star, with all the camp of kid detective sitcoms and an oceanic undercurrent of eco-unrest. Elegant simplicity. Word-by-word delight. Sentence-by-sentence wonder, awe, and ecstatic enjoyment. A continually beguiling and endearing work of heart-fondling irrealism. My superlatives will begin to sound laxative, but I can't exude enough enthusiasm. When I inevitably buy and read her other books, I'll still remember this one clearly, and possibly reread it. It crystallizes in my mind, as I rehash eerie scenes of washed-out vaporwave off-color, watery Californian landscapes, unfolding in warehouses and film sets and virtual forums where conspiracy theorists with clickey keyboards dissect every pixel of our heroine's filmography and implied psychic landscape. Paparazzi, media corruption, and intimate disinterest infuse the vibrant setting. Told through long dialogue-heavy scenes offering wry wit, surprising character details and moments of existential dread. Sprinkles of philosophic quandaries and poetic fancy. The interior monologues are magnificent, often reminding me of Bae Suah. A. K. will join the list of my favorite, on-the-rise writers, along with Elizabeth Tan. Other comps: Scarlett Thomas, Joy Williams, Dan Chaon and Lucia Berlin, or the countless films and shows describing suburban weirdness, tending toward a noticeable decline into post-apocalyptic predictions that are too on-the-nose.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

6 out of 5.
I sat shocked and shimmering upon finishing this book. And then I started reading it again, immediately -- something I've only ever done before... with Alex's first book.
It's a masterpiece, a furious and frightening look at the end of the world, the one we're living through. It will confound and delight, make you squirm and laugh. The world is ending but not before we get to read this -- and really, it's just our world that's ending, as this book makes violently clear.

[Mehak · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s unusual that I’m unable to finish a book, but getting through this one felt like such a chore I had to stop with 90 pages left. I picked it up because Kleeman’s novel was compared to Delillo,’s work — it’s very clear the overlaps between this book and Delillo’s “White Noise,” which was hugely influential for me as a reader.

But “Something New Under The Sun” falls short of “eco-thriller” and is slow-moving and full of fairly obvious/on the nose political statements about capitalism, water in California, California itself, and parasocial relationships. This might have been better as a novella, HBO max limited series, or A24 film. It also may have been more impactful if it were written 20 years ago.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something New Under the Sun is a captivating and ambitious tale in which a novelist discovers the dark and disturbing side of Hollywood and reckons with ambition, corruption and connectedness in the age of capitalism, environmental collapse and ecological awakening - set against the searing heat of a near-future Los Angeles, CA. East Coast novelist Patrick Hamlin has just arrived in LA in order to supervise the making of his book, Elsinore Lane, a sad and emotional novel inspired by his father's passing, into a film. As part of the adaptation deal, he is provided with a job on the set but unfortunately, it entails being the errand boy to former child star and notorious pain the backside Cassidy Carter, who has been cast in the lead role; his main task, however, is to ensure the unpredictable and tempestuous starlet turned B-lister makes it to the set on time. As if that wasn't bad enough, Patrick finds that he barely recognises the script when compared to the book, which isn't exactly brilliant. But outdoors, bigger problems are brewing.

Nearby a wildfire rages, ravaging everything in its path and causing mass devastation likely caused by a drought making the area arid and in desperate need of water. A new company that has just appeared on the horizon, one providing a privatised supply of a synthetic form of water known as WAT-R seems to be behind the environmental crisis. Could corporate corruption, greed and the need to make a profit really be at the centre of the chaotic ecological scenario the residents of the area are now experiencing? Partnering with Cassidy, Patrick heads out to investigate the sun-scorched city's darker crevices, where they discover that catastrophe resembles order until the last possible second. This is a compulsive and thought-provoking read with a lot to say on current affairs especially regarding climate change and how the way we live is affecting the world around us yet we are too set in our cushy lifestyles to try to make a meaningful change. What unfolds is a heightened simulation of our own precarious times and a parable about the difficulty of imagining an exit from them.

Kleeman was inspired to write the story due to the perpetual proliferation of conspiracy thinking, her childhood on the outskirts of Los Angeles and the role of plate tectonics. Action-packed, propulsive and palpably tense from start to finish, I found myself completely enthralled and entranced by the chilling yet intelligent plot, which I absolutely tore through. This is a witty, profound and wickedly twisty novel that is not only thoroughly entertaining but also explores how artificial solutions can lead to even greater problems, with potentially dire consequences for humanity. It brings Kleeman’s fascination with consumerism, artificiality and biopolitics to bear on the California water crisis, an ecological catastrophe unfolding in slow motion. The natural landscape is often pushed to the background of human-centred stories—but her goal is to write about this landscape in a way that gives it agency, insists on its role in everything we do and highlights the way in which supposedly minor changes to our relationship with our surroundings can have truly catastrophic ramifications. Highly recommended.

[Yahaira · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-3.5

This is such a weird book to rate. There was some beautiful prose and imagery. But there was also over written dialogue that made everything drag. It’s funny to read philosophical bros talking, but the joke grows weary quickly:

--- The Arm shakes his head, gazing out the window at small plumes of smoke in the distance, on the occluded face of the yellowing foothills. “It’s because nobody can see the whole picture. There’s enough road for all the cars to move along smoothly at the same speed, but even if we understand this at a rational level, we can’t do anything with the knowledge. Our default is to behave as self-interested individuals. Sometimes we work against that principle and defer to another driver, but even that’s just a variant on individualistic behavior. When you slow down to let someone merge in, you contribute to the worsening of the whole.” He nudges the gas pedal. The car lurches forward three feet, and then rolls down to a near halt.
“Altruism is no escape. Only an exhaustive revolution could hope to alter the scale of daily existence,” says Horseshoe, searching the glove compartment for more gum.


The plot (very light one) doesn't really take off until over halfway through the book. I would not call this an eco thriller or detective thriller as others have - the word thriller does not apply here. The ‘mystery’ really falls flat and most of the answers are pretty obvious to us. Which I think was the point. This book was more about what is hidden in plain sight, what our (authentic?) relation to reality is, and how many of us it takes to face reality or to skew it.

--- Reality was easier to override than ever, and the substitute was much more potent, much harder to forget
…….

There were other planes of reality that could be accessed, other ways of putting the world in order, which were no less true or concrete.

There’s a movie possibly being made, fake water being sold as Wat-R, drought and fires all over California, but what I wanted to know more about was the commune in upstate NY called Earthbridge. They mourn ecological losses, limited to three a day, but not personal ones since that would be indulgent. That may be the story I was looking for.

Thank you Random House for the ARC!

[Ryan Jantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to keep my thoughts on this spoiler-free. Something New is a highly literary mystery dealing with celebrity and environmental collapse set in a sort of not too distant Hollywood. The first 100 or so pages are totally breathless as we follow a somewhat indignant but strangely likable author working on a film adaptation of his novel. The movie set and crew are firmly planted in the surreal, and odd details thrown in here and there increasingly creep into the frame, become unignorable, become what the entire novel is actually about. A truly weird and stunning book that I’m still mulling over…

But also: the end. while i intellectually accept what kleeman was doing with the absence of any big reveal, my lizard brain really needed one. i am almost ashamed to admit that i was more interested in the surface level plot - i loved cassidy and i absolutely loved the conspiracy forum. i was invested in toppling wat-r! i wanted patrick to find success or find happiness or.. something! i found the final 50 pages or so to be a bit challengingly abstract, often beautifully written but overall unsatisfying - especially compared to the first half of the book which i ripped through. something new is sharp, surreal, bleak, and difficult.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I'm reading too many of these chicken-little dystopian novels, but I got impatient with this one. Here, water production has become privatized in California, and that is scary enough, and reading about the different grades of manufactured product just made me extremely thirsty.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked Kleeman's first novel, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, although I found the first half much stronger than the second. Something New Under the Sun is more consistent, while displaying the same unsettling and distinctively controlled writing. The style and plot cleverly combine Hollywood noir with examination of how American culture struggles with climate change. The main characters are a self-involved novelist who travels to LA to work on a film adapting one of his novels, his wife and daughter, and the lead actress in the film. Patrick the novelist, who initially seems like a fairly standard protagonist, gradually has his confidence and entire sense of self unravelled. His wife Alison and daughter Nora are far away on an environmentalist retreat and can only communicate with him via confused phone calls. Cassidy, an ostensibly irresponsible and wild young actress, is at first seen through Patrick's eyes then slowly turns into the protagonist.

The environmental collapse of Los Angeles is constantly present in the narrative. Wildfires burn uncontrollably, while water has become so scarce that it's replaced by a synthetic substitute named WAT-R. Everything about WAT-R is incredibly sinister yet convincing, a truly brilliant creation:

Behind the register is an oversized graph that shows where the different sub-brands of WAT-R figure in terms of purity and goodness. On the vertical axis, the scale goes from 'Pure' to 'Extremely Pure'. On the horizontal axis, the graph maps a range from 'Slippery' to 'Sticky'. Plotted all over are activities ideally suited to that particular nexus of purity and grip. Showering, for example, is best with WAT-R of moderate purity and a slippery texture. Drinking WAT-R, on the other hand, should have high purity and high stickiness, so as to aid in bodily absorption. Patrick tries to zoom in on the photo he's taken, to read the tiny printed names of sub-brands and figure out if he's been drinking and showering with the right stuff, but as the photo gets larger it dissolves into a meaningless shading of pixels and hue.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine also included disturbing fictional products that could easily exist. I really liked how Kleeman borrowed and repurposed elements of setting and plot from noir mysteries in Something New Under the Sun. A revelation about WAT-R doesn't come as a surprise to the reader, nor is it any help to the protagonists. The contrast between Patrick, Alison, and Nora's experiences is sharp and powerful. Alison's memories of the 'lawn incident' and Nora's weird perceptiveness diverge from Patrick's confusion and loss of control. Cassidy's backstory and the fandom for her series Kassie Keene: Kid Detective are also deployed well. The collision between Hollywood's profound artificiality and climate change isn't an easy subject to grapple with and I think Kleeman handles it brilliantly. Something New Under the Sun is frightening, perceptive, and often darkly funny. It felt too real to tag as dystopia, although a few years ago I would have considered it such. If you enjoy near-future horror about water shortages, I also recommend a creepy Korean drama called The Silent Sea.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you read a book which you know will stay with you and this, for me, was definitely one of those novels. Patrick Hamlin is a novelist, who travels to Hollywood to 'oversee' the film adaptation of one of his novels, "Elsinore Lane." However, once he gets his hand on the script, he finds his personal tale of his father's death has become something unrecognisable, while 'overseeing,' the film, means that he is mainly running errands for Executive Producers Jay Arkid and Brenda Billington. One of his jobs is to drive around starlet Cassidy Carter; previous child star of 'Kassi-Keene: Kid Detective.'

Patrick feels that his life is falling apart. His wife Alison and daughter, Nora, have relocated to a nature retreat called, 'Earthbridge,' where extinct creatures are mourned and Nora has visions. There is one pay phone and Alison seems uncontactable, leaving Patrick worrying, watching old Cassidy Carter shows and reading the message boards which spill over with conspiracy theories.

This novel is set in the near future and the main differences between then and now is that people rely on a chemical substitute for water, named 'WAT-R,' the countryside seems to be constantly on fire and people are suffering from a disease, called Random-Onset Acute Dementia (ROAD). When Patrick and Cassidy suspect a link between Jay and Brenda, WAT-R and ROAD, they embark on a strange road-trip to try to discover the truth and to find out what really matters.

Sometimes, books have odd couples, or pairings, and Patrick and Cassidy are certainly a strange combination, but work well together. Patrick is a man who is floundering in his career, and his marriage, while Cassidy is both outwardly confident and inwardly vulnerable. Cassidy has known the dark side of fame, but is always very much aware of how to use it. While people have plastic surgery to recreate her perfect nose, castigate or admire her on the internet, or watch her - all too public - meltdowns, she attempts to retain her dignity and her career. Sometimes sad, always thoughtful, the depth of the characters make this book worth reading. I received a copy of this book from the publishers, via NetGalley, for review.

[Nadine in California]

DNF at page 75. From the synopsis I hoped for a story that was fun, fast, and made an ecological point. A story that will "...investigate the sun-scorched city's darker crevices, where they discover that catastrophe resembles order until the last possible second." By the 20% mark, the sad-sackness of the protagonist was wearing me down, and the other, more interesting and lively elements promised were slowly and uninterestingly raising their heads. Of course, if I'd have pushed on those other elements might have gotten stronger, but it was too late - I had lost faith in the pacing. I have a feeling this book would never be more than 'ok' and I love to read too much to settle for ok. YMMV, since I have a particular aversion to sad sack protagonists - only one book I've read was strong enough to get me past a similar beginning, and that was The Nix.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

An okay story, including a mystery that's so transparent I'm not even sure it's supposed to be a mystery, ruined by bad characters. Specifically Arm and Horseshoe, who aren't characters so much as they are mannequins used to deliver long paragraphs of stoner philosophy before they drift back off into the background. They're non-characters, and the book suffered by dedicating pretty much the entire first chapter to their rambling. It never really recovered from that, even though the characters eventually vanished from the story entirely.

I'd be willing to give the author a second chance on another book, but I really hope she gets better with her characters with it.

[Robyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
Alexandra Kleeman

Thank God that is over! I am not sure what this was actually supposed to be, mystery? Not sure.. Who were Arm and Horsehoe? Noncharacters that showed up and give long spills ideology... they didn't even stay in the story the whole time. I could never connect with the story or the characters.. so I missed the point and thought it was a waste of time.

1.2 stars

Happy Reading!

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A writer heads out to Hollywood to be part of the process of converting his autobiographical novel into a film. California is on fire, water has been privatized, the star is an erratic diva, and the script fails to resemble his experiences. All this is fine, evergreen but uninspired, but the satire quickly starts to crumble and turn murky, while the ostensible protagonist receeds and other characters take on more nuance. There's a kind of conspiracy plot, but its reveals are probably those you'll have sensed much earlier, and I'm not sure it entirely matters. There's a fair bit of Inherent Vice, perhaps, but also something more like Inland Empire. When our flighty starlet applies hard-nosed skills learned from her heavily-fan-forum-analyzed teen-detective serial to solve the problems of the narrative, something in the mechanics of the story start to give way, but incompletely. By the end, they've dissolved into something else.

I read this back to back with Joy Williams' new novel Harrow. They are stylistically and narratively quite different, but both very much literatures of the present moment, of the penultimate decade. Of the apocalyptic late anthropocene. Arguably the essential literature of the 20s. I can only imagine what the novels of the 30s will be.

[Resh (The Book Satchel) · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a good one. more thoughts on the longer review on Satchel Notes..
4.5 stars

Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Newsletter

[Zsa Zsa · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[LeeAnn Heringer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book made so little sense that I started keeping a WTF list.

1. Artificial Water??? You can create water from the basic hydrogen / oxygen components but it does produce a lot of energy -- which they seem to get rid of by adding flame-retardant, which because the energy is produced on an atomic level makes about as much sense as adding flame-retardant to an atomic bomb. But what you get is water, not artificial water. And since the California problem isn't really not enough water, it's not enough fresh, uncontaminated water in the places where people want that water. Desalination plants anyone?

2. This entire system of trucks delivering water and having to pay the motel to bring up / install a water jug for the bathroom to work?? In the high-tech California I live in, we would just be using spot meters with credit card readers and pay with your phone.

3. So no one in highly health conscious California notices people of all ages, children, falling down with dementia?? This is a place where half the population refuses bread because it contains gluten and they believe that would give them a stomachache, you're going to convince people to drink "artificial water" and not care when it has obvious physical and mental side effects?

4. A successful film director that carries a flip phone??

5. People prefer artificial water because it comes in flavors?? I can get real water in flavors and what's a soft drink but water with a flavor added?

6. The homeless people living on the beach know how to build a solar still to get real fresh water, but no one else does??

7. The state of California is just on fire constantly to the point where flora and fauna have evolved to live in a constant fire zone?? And no one seems to be excited about that? They just keep driving along the freeway.

8. Why are they suddenly drinking fake water on the east coast in a doomsday, prepper camp?? This off the grid place doesn't have its own wells?

9. If you're going to introduce a man in a gray suit and have him be the ending of the book, by all means having it be completely random and without context so that we couldn't possibly attach meaning to it. I was almost going to give this book 2 stars until I got to the really, really bad not-an-ending. By all means, don't bother creating a story arc, just stop writing at some point and declare it done. Readers love that.

[John Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I honestly don't even know what to say about this book.

First, the writing is so bloated. There are descriptions that go on and on and on and on for pages that completely disrupt any rhythm the book has. There are occasionally great lines but, all in all, the prose is way over-written.

Second, I didn't care one iota for any of these characters. Is Cassidy supposed to have some sort of redemption arc? Is Patrick supposed to be sympathetic? Brenda and Jay - are they supposed to be the evil criminal masterminds? We hardly learn anything about them. What are we supposed to feel about Alison? What about Nora? What's the point of her being so precocious? Also, she's what, a clairvoyant, too? None of these characters have any depth (no, flashbacks to random childhood anecdotes aren't enough) that made me feel anything for them. Are they supposed to be sympathetic because they feel untethered and helpless? Stand ins for anxieties about impending ecological disaster and the capitalist exploitation of it? I appreciate the premise, but the execution fell totally flat for me.

Finally, not a single plot point moves the story forward until 200+ pages in. And, even then, it hardly felt like anything even really happened in this book.

I really wanted to like this book. I bought it because Jeff Vandermeer, who I love, wrote a nice blurb for the hard cover. But I am actually annoyed I spent almost a week reading this.

[Alex Gilvarry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The two main characters, the novelist Patrick Hamlin and starlet Cassidy Carter, are some of the most unforgettable characters I've read in years. They have that unlikely-pair dynamic that we all feel comfort in, and it's so much fun falling down the spiral of an eco-mystery with them as our guide. But the biggest surprises won't be found in how the plot unravels or the whodunnit (which this book has in two or three subplots). The biggest reveal is in the prose--the sentences and language will make you chuckle, delight, and despair. The characters' emotions and desires are deeply connected to the Earth (even the ambivalent ones), as is the emotional core of this novel. (Currently reading THE OVERSTORY--and 'Something New' is a nice companion novel that dips into genre.) If you're looking for a plotty plotted thriller this is definitely not for you. But if you get your kicks from something imaginative, subtly recognizable with an altered apocalyptic bend, and from sentences that rollick--you're gonna love this book!

[Jaylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is WILD and so smart. There are so many moving parts here, in the hands of another novelist this could have been a mess. However this is a controlled, ambitious, lustrous, terrifying novel. Climate anxiety! Environmental collapse! Hollywood detective noir! Conspiracy theories! Hamlet allusions! Fading child actors! Familial tension! Fake water! Late capitalism!

[Karen Germain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of Alexandra Kleeman’s novel, Something New Under the Sun, in exchange for an honest review.

Patrick Hamlin is thrilled and beyond flattered to learn that his novel will be turned into a major Hollywood movie. His ego is further stroked when he is invited to be a production assistant. Patrick’s dreams are soon crushed, when he realizes that he is a glorified water boy and that his screenplay bears little resemblance to his novel.

Still dazzled by the idea that this could be his Hollywood “In” Patrick sticks around and becomes a chauffeur for the leading lady, Cassidy Carter. Cassidy Carter is a former child star and notorious party girl. She is trying to break-free from her association with the character that made her famous, a teen detective. This hit show not only propelled her to stardom, but inspired a cult-like following that believes that the show was riddled with hidden messages that affect the real world.

While people are focused on conspiracies and Hollywood, a real life and death scandal is unfolding on the west coast. Severe droughts have created a situation where a synthetic water product called “Wat-r” has replaced much of the real water. The product is insidious, and only the very wealthy are able to access authentic water. Cassidy even negotiates to be paid in real water for her role.

Wat-R has been linked to cognitive decline in certain individuals, affecting people of all ages and races. This situation has been shrouded in secrecy with the affected being whisked away to private hospitals, but the more popular that Wat-R becomes, the more people are being affected, and the problem is increasingly more difficult to hide. Patrick and Cassidy begin to suspect that the producers of their film are involved in a nefarious Wat-R scheme and they become amateur sleuths, not unlike Cassidy’s former character.

Something New Under the Sun is an anxiety producing read. It deals with some true fears of mine, including extreme drought, harmful substances, and general environmental woes. I finished Kleeman’s novel this morning and the first news story I read was about a dire climate change report. Something New Under the Sun takes place in a near-future and it is not unreasonable to think that some of the fictional results from this story could be a reality.

I’m originally from Los Angeles, it’s always going to be my home. Kleeman did an excellent job with her descriptions of the city and the landscape, including the Palm Desert area. She also does a fabulous job at creating the characters that populate a movie set, those opportunistic loafers who are just waiting for their own big break. It’s an interesting contrast to have a story regarding the doom of humanity set against the Hollywood movie scene.

Although I found the premise and the characters to be intriguing, I struggled to connect with the story, especially during the last third. Possibly my connecting block came from the sheer volume of anxiety I felt thinking about my beloved hometown devolving into a wasteland. It’s a bleak novel. Also, I think the end took such a strange and surreal twist that I wanted off the ride. My mind was wandering and I found myself skimming the last thirty or so pages.

Like my review? Check out my blog!

[Juniperus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly I’d like to say that after reading both her novels, Alexandra Kleeman is one of the best prose writers working today. She effortlessly describes the familiar in the most horrific ways, forcing you to look at things you take for granted in a new light. That being said, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine was great until the end, when genre elements were brought in sort of jarringly. Something New Under the Sun introduces them right away, namely WAT-R, a privatized artificial water. Because of the focus on water and its cycles, the book feels sort of like the eco-thriller version of Chinatown, or maybe The Crying of Lot 49. Of course, the regionalism might be why I’m thinking of those, you could even call this book “SoCal Gothic.”

Like her last book, Something New Under the Sun is a story about vapid people and culture, consumerism, advertising, and this time environmentalism. Kleeman writes with love about nature and there are some surprisingly beautiful passages that reminded me of Rachel Carson’s prose. This contrasts well with the abject horror of the rest of the story. The book takes place on a film set, something I know intimately well (props to Kleeman because this was very accurate)! Parts of this book were so terrifying they were funny, and this book honestly gave me a crazy episode of paranoia. This book has a lot to say, but I wish it was more like You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, where the horror lies in the mundanity of everyday life rather than a grand sweeping conspiracy.

[Olivera · Rating 4 out of 5]

delirijum

[Jessica Dekker · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Adulthood was a curious inversion of childhood helplessness; you were pinned in place by what was below you and around you, by what you owned and loved, rather than any sort of higher authority.”

“..it takes strength to believe in what’s not there. To insist that something is true when your eyes and ears and brain and heart tell you it’s not.”

In this story, set in a near-future dystopia, we follow Patrick, an author. He’s been flown across the country, to Hollywood, to work on the film adaptation of his novel, but as a PA and with no agency over how his novel translates to film, no participation in the screenwriting process, but instead hired as an assistant and chauffeur to Cassidy Carter, the star of the film. With his marriage on edge, his wife and daughter having driven north to a compound in Maine, Patrick begins to suspect something isn’t quite right with the production of the film. With wildfires engulfing most of California, most of the west coast population is relying on a synthetic form of water called WAT-R, which is being mass produced by a suspicious new company. Cassidy appears to be one of the only people who doesn’t drink WAT-R and thus sets out to investigate this company alongside Patrick — I won’t say more than that as I don’t want to ruin any of the secrets before you’ve even had a chance to see them unravel.

In this novel there’s a mix of detective noir fiction, conspiracy theories, familial drama, satire, with elements of humor, an environmental crisis, and capitalism.

I found this book to be so Smart, with a capital S. Truly unique and unsettling to say the least. An entertaining whirlwind of a novel, where at times I felt I was escaping into a Black Mirror episode, yet also interwoven were some beautiful passages that I couldn’t help but highlight.

I found Alexandra Kleeman’s writing style to be so refreshing, with an important message on climate change, wrapped in dark humor - all of which I truly appreciated.

This may not be the book for everyone, and is a little more plot heavy than I’m typically drawn toward, but I can’t deny the admirable quality to Kleeman’s writing and her overall message.

If you’re looking for an environmental dystopia that’s witty, fun and outright weird, this is the book for you.

I can’t wait to purchase a final copy so that I can reread and annotate because this book definitely deserves a spot on my shelf.


*Thank you to Hogarth for providing me with this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I truly appreciate it.*

**The quote included is from a digital advanced reader’s copy and is subject to change upon final publication.**