Misrecognition
- Author Madison Newbound
- Narrator TBD
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Run Time 1 hour and 40 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- £7.99
- £6.99
- £5.99
- £4.99
- £3.99
Listen to a sample
What to expect
Elsa is struggling. Her formative, exhilarating relationship – with an older couple – has abruptly ended, leaving her depressed and directionless in her childhood bedroom. In the relationship’s wake, Elsa scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning.
Faithfully, her screen provides a new obsession: a charismatic young actor whose latest feature is a gay love story that illuminates Elsa’s crisis. And then, as if she had conjured him, the actor arrives in her hometown, with an entourage of fellow actors, writers, and directors, for the annual theatre festival. When she is hired at the one upscale restaurant in town, Elsa finds herself thrown into in contact with the actor and his circle.
But her obsession shifts from the actor to his frequent dinner companion – an alluring, androgynous person called Sam. As this confusing connection develops, Elsa is forced to grapple with her sexuality, the uncomfortable truths about the end of her last relationship, and the patterns that may be playing out once again.
Unflinchingly sharp and funny, Misrecognition is an unforgettable debut novel about the internet, post-postmodern adulthood and queer identity.
Critics Review
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Numbed by heartbreak, lost in a peculiarly American loneness, the protagonist of Madison Newbound’s haunting novel brings new understandings of identity and sex to old experiences of melancholy and obsession. I’ve never read anything that captures so vividly the distinct texture of desire, at once feverish and vacant, engendered by the infinite scroll of online life. Misrecognition is a brave and blazingly smart debut
GARTH GREENWELL -
Sleek and sexy, assured yet searching, Misrecognition so perfectly captures the highs and lows of intimacy in the digital age, the loneliness of always being connected but also the soul-rearranging elation of finding someone who shows you to yourself
MICHELLE HART, author of We Do What We Do In the Dark -
An astonishingly assured debut. Every interaction is like a mirage, at once familiar and estranging, and in Newbound’s enthralling novel we are all, every one of us, actors
SARAH BLAKLY-CARTWRIGHT, author of Alice, Sadie, Celine -
Misrecognition casts a spell in coolly detached prose, brilliantly plunging us into the porous membrane between the social and the parasocial. I was blown away by this singular and mesmerizing debut
Antoine Wilson, author of Mouth to Mouth
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