THE DISTRACTIONSBy Liza MonroyRegalo Press; January 14, 2025With the purchase of each book, a charitable donation will be made to the Center for Humane Technology.
About The Book
The novel follows solitary tech worker Mischa Osborn, who is mourning the shelving of their passion project—an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of love—when a chance encounter with a social media celebrity leads them spiraling into an all-consuming obsession.Mischa Osborn spends their days as a ProWatcher—keeping distracted people on task and lonely ones accompanied—from their Brooklyn Megabuilding, while eating PetriMeat Steax and working out with their favorite personal trainer, a straight-talking algorithm named Tory.Mischa’s carefully constructed, isolated existence is suddenly upended by a chance realspace encounter with a HighlightReel celebrity, Nicolás Adán Luchano. On their first date, hiking in Kuulsuits and watching DroneBeez pollinate flowers, Mischa experiences a brief but intense realspace connection.Mischa takes to relentlessly watching Nic onReel. As Mischa’s ReelWatching spirals into an all-consuming obsession, and even realspace stalking, Mischa takes increasingly desperate measures to be seen and valued, sucking others into their vortex of obsession until they completely lose control.Meanwhile, someone is equally obsessed with Mischa, tracking their every move and perhaps even influencing their choices.
Praise for Liza Monroy’s Works:“Liza Monroy has a magical voice, the kind that makes you want to read the next sentence and then the one after that to see what turn her writing will take next. She is observant, funny, and curiously wise about the culture we live and flounder in.”—Daphne Merkin, writer and critic for The New Yorker, essayist and novelist“An all-around expert on romantic love, Liza Monroy delivers these lively, touching essays about love in the depersonalized time of tech. Spanning countries and dates – some more successful than others and all under the watchful eye of her mother, a profiler for the U.S. State Department – Monroy delivers an engaging chronicle for our times.”—San Jose Mercury News“Liza Monroy is a great date — a masterful storyteller, witty, urbane, tender, and hilarious.”—Dan White, author of Under The Stars and The Cactus Eaters“…it is interesting to watch Monroy learn her lessons, to stop romanticizing her partners or assigning them to neat boxes, to assert boundaries and rules, even if they get broken. When she finally gets her happy ending, it feels earned.”—Publishers Weekly
About Liza Monroy:Liza Monroy is the author of The Distractions and three previous books. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, O (Oprah Magazine), Poets & Writers, Marie Claire, Longreads, Newsweek, Guernica, Catamaran, Jane, Self, Psychology Today, Jezebel, Publishers Weekly, Poets & Writers,
Bust and many other publications and anthologies, including both editions of The New York Times’ Best of Modern Love, Best American Food Writing 2021, Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, Oprah’s Little Book of Calm and Comfort, One Big Happy Family, and Wedding Cake For Breakfast.
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