Note to Self
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?
”'Simone’s is a wisecracking, mordantly observant, wide-awake voice. Even when the humor is bitter, there’s something joyful in it—like hearing a direct dispatch from a neurotic person’s consciousness.” - —Karen Russell, O Magazine
‘’Note to Self’ is goofy, sweet, and all the things you want in a coming-of-age story. There’s redemption in all this quotidian depravity.’ - Jen Vafidis, The Daily Beast -
”'A very good first novel … Simone is not the kind of writer who is in a hurry to rescue her heroine” - - Nick Hornby
”'The Internet has burrowed deep into our souls, and Alina Simone writes about it with radical honesty. Plus she's hilarious.” - - Amanda Palmer
”'People as multi-talented and skilled as Alina Simone, who sings beautifully, writes essays, and now foists upon us a truly funny and poignant novel, need to be stopped. And maybe they will be, but in the meantime, there is no harm in falling into the soulful voice of Simone's narrator, Anna, as she struggles with the end of numb, cubicled youth and the awkward beginnings of new life.” - - Sam Lipsyte, author of 'The Fun Parts’
”'’Note to Self 'is smart, zany and sadly true about all that's truly sad about the state of human cognition in the digital age.” - - Meghan Daum, author of 'Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House’
‘’Note to Self’ deftly dissects our Internet addiction, trawling the shallows of the 21st-century noncommittal mind in an engrossing story that both entertains and provokes. Alina Simone is a witty chronicler of our times.’ - Teddy Wayne, author of ‘The Love Song of Jonny Valentine’ -
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