NOTE TO SELF - Alina Simone

A darkly humorous reckoning of our modern condition – spam mail, internships, frenemies and hype – and the story of Anna’s quest for the meaningful life she knows she deserves. Are you a real person? Anna Krestler has been fired and needs a new job. What she doesn’t need is to check her Gmail account for new messages, or click-through to a blog on underwear that prevents cameltoe. But Anna is addicted to the internet, and no matter how much her life-coach bullies her, she can’t resist the lure of the next link. Everything changes for Anna when she chances upon a particularly cryptic online advert. Her reply is the gateway to an existential adventure that sees her swallowed whole by New York’s avant-garde art scene and the strange world of experimental cinema. Anna will do anything to impress Taj, the enigmatic filmmaker, and gradually he begins to direct every aspect of Anna’s life. But is Taj for real anyway? Is Anna? And what’s better? To be totally, obviously real, or really obviously fake?

This one is about a late-blooming 37-year-old who's looking for love online. I was laughing out loud reading lines like "Kudos to you... it's not easy to eroticize a cabbage leaf." Simone's is a wisecracking, mordantly observant, wide-awake voice. Even when the humour is bitter, there's somethinf joyful in it - like hearing a direct dispatch from a neurotic person's consciousness.
By Oprah