Sociable

by Rebecca Harrington

Overview

“Extremely funny.” —The Washington Post

Elinor Tomlinson moved to New York armed with a journalism degree and a dream. Instead, she’s working as a nanny and sleeping on a foam pad in a weird apartment. So when Elinor is offered a job at Journalism.ly, the digital media brainchild of a Silicon Valley celebrity, she jumps at the chance. There, Elinor discovers her true gift: she has a preternatural ability for writing sharable content. But as she experiences professional success, the rest of her life falters: her boyfriend dumps her, two male colleagues insist on “mentoring” her, and a piece she writes about her personal life lands her on local television. As Elinor grapples with the bewildering etiquette of online dating, the preening male ego, and the capricious nature of Internet fame, she faces a new challenge—how to reconcile her internal self with the world of thoughts and feelings online.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804172172
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

REBECCA HARRINGTON is the author of the novel Penelope and the comic essay collection I'll Have What She's Having. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times, Elle, NPR.com, and other publications. She lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Sociable"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Rebecca Harrington.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

A delicious, sardonic send-up of Millennial romance and tech culture.” —Marie Claire
 
“Illuminated against a hilarious and satirical backdrop, Harrington writes about navigating digital media in the workplace, handling a bad breakup (through equally worse online dating), and what feminist friendships look like after college.” —Nylon

“Extremely funny… Harrington’s novel starts out in the 'Go, girl!' vein but ultimately covers more difficult territory as Elinor negotiates the new world of content — and the content of her new world.” —Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post

“We first fell in love with Rebecca Harrington when she tried all the things for New York magazine (including Hillary Clinton's diet and electrocuting her face)... In Sociable, we get a taste of Rebecca's signature wit courtesy of main character Elinor Tomlinson, who shows up to New York City with journalistic aspirations, but has to work for a lousy old website (gasp!).” —Clever

"Anybody who’s ever been young, heartbroken, overdrawn, or posted a regrettable Instagram photo—in other words, everyone, everywhere—should read this book. Rebecca Harrington demonstrates how painful it is for a millennial to be dragged, kicking and protesting, into adulthood, and then she makes you laugh. Sociable is a rare achievement." —Katherine Heiny, author of Standard Deviation

"With Sociable, Rebecca Harrington has given us a hilarious, charming, and spot-on satire of the Buzzfeed age. It's impossible not to root for Elinor as she navigates her way through work, love, and Instagram. I tore through this book in a single sitting, and so will you." —Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding

"A comedy of manners about people who have none. Harrington skewers the world of Instagram contentment, listicle factories posing as news sites, and the joys of dating – both IRL and online. Hilarious and bold, Sociable is a perfect send-up of our social media obsessed culture." —Emily Culliton, author of The Misfortune of Marion Palm

"A young woman traverses her 20s and the toxic landscape of New York media in Harrington’s novel of millennial manners… Harrington captures the oppressive narcissism and frustrated ambitions of Elinor’s world with nauseating accuracy. Frothy on the surface with teeth underneath." —Kirkus 

"Harrington gleefully skewers digital media and postgraduate working blues with this dark satire of self-absorbed millennials trying to remake journalism and romance. [A] cyber coming-of-age tale... with shrewd observations and biting humor." –Publishers Weekly 

"Sociable is a too-real look at what it’s like to work in digital media. Or really, to be a Millennial with a stronger grasp on what makes something go viral than being a 'real' adult. You’ll read this painfully real, painfully funny book in one sitting." —Elizabeth Entenman, HelloGiggles

From the Publisher

01/01/2018
Harrington (Penelope) gleefully skewers digital media and postgraduate working blues with this dark satire of self-absorbed millennials trying to remake journalism and romance. Her cyber coming-of-age tale revolves around Elinor and her college boyfriend, Mike, who live together in a cramped New York City apartment with no stove and a foam pad for a bed while they work toward their dreams of writing about important issues. Mike, who has a leg up—his parents pay his rent and his mom is a famous essayist—scores a writing job at a snarky website. Meanwhile, Elinor, making money as a nanny, winds up at a struggling rival news site, Journalism.ly, where she’s hired to pump up its audience as “viral trends editor” and proves to be a natural. While Elinor refines the art of clickbait, her relationships with Mike and her best friend fall apart. After relieving her heartache with a takedown of Mike online and on TV, Elinor dives into online dating and, unsurprisingly, meets other disaffected millennials with pretentious ambitions. With shrewd observations and biting humor, Harrington paints a bleak picture of a generation relentlessly focused on looking inward—and at their social media status. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2017-12-24
A young woman traverses her 20s and the toxic landscape of New York media in Harrington's (I'll Have What She's Having, 2015, etc.) novel of millennial manners.Well into her tenure in New York City, aspiring journalist Elinor Tomlinson has a job as a nanny, a painfully self-important literary boyfriend from college, and a foam pad that serves as a bed. That is, until her boyfriend's mother—a hotshot essayist who writes incisive columns like "A Mother's Guilt" and "What Gen X Forgot"—hooks her up with a job at Journalism.ly, a BuzzFeed-esque startup, where she's in charge of viral content. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Mike, is writing Important Think Pieces about Important Topics like waste management for Memo Points Daily while surrounded by small, Virginia Woolf-looking girls with appropriately literary credentials. Mike doesn't have much use for Elinor's new job (Mike has few redeeming characteristics), but Elinor, it turns out, has a gift for writing high-traffic posts, even when she's miserable, which she soon is: Mike unceremoniously dumps her, coming back to their shared hovel only to collect his stuff (including a "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like" T-shirt and his Gatorade); Elinor is forced to a "semi-studio" in Queens (shared bathroom, no kitchen). In general, Elinor is drowning in a sea of lackluster men with inexplicable standing; not just Mike or her subsequent online dates, but her two male bosses, who have both magnanimously appointed themselves her "mentor." And yet Elinor, despite these obstacles—principally, being 20-something and a woman in New York—begins, slowly, haltingly, to find a more functional version of herself. No one really says much of anything, thanks to Harrington's preference for mumblecore-style dialogue, nor do the characters particularly transcend their archetypes, but Harrington captures the oppressive narcissism and frustrated ambitions of Elinor's world with nauseating accuracy.Frothy on the surface with teeth underneath.

Kirkus Review