REVIEW: "Followers" by Megan Angelo
Several years ago, I decided to launch a book blog.
The decision seemed like a logical one.
I loved reading.
I loved writing.
And I loved drinking.
This new endeavor, it seemed, would prove the perfect opportunity to combine this trio of interests.
For years prior, I had reserved my writing skills for the production of freelanced pieces on topics ranging from fertility treatments to the inclusion of cash recyclers in the modern banking process. But finally, this new passion project would give me the opportunity to write about something about which I actually gave a shit.
So, after some name brainstorming and a quick check to see if the blog name I selected — Drink. Read. Repeat. — was, in fact, available, I was off.
Suddenly, I had a bright, shiny, empty new blog and an abundance of eagerness to light the fucking literary world on fire.
It would be great fun, I figured.
I would write book reviews.
And I would write blog posts.
And I would build Buzzfeed style quizzes.
And people would love them.
I would offer a fresh voice.
I would have an interesting point of view.
I would wrangle nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs, using them to build sentences that would transcend the ordinary.
It would be magnetic.
Irresistible.
Compelling.
Audiences would flock.
But then, they didn’t.
Though I quickly picked up some are viewers — there are a lot of bored people clicking around on the internet, after all — it became almost immediately apparent to me that, to be truly successful, I would need something more.
I would need some followers.
I would need a dedicated audience.
I would need people who wanted to read what I had so painstakingly written — combining the perfect words in the perfect way to perfectly capture my unique opinion of each book that crossed my path.
And so I set about amassing a following.
Building a cadre of fans on Instagram.
Creating a collection of people who would, in fact, care about my opinion and want to read what I had written.
Because I learned that I had been naive.
You could write the best material in the world.
You could have the best ideas.
You could have the best way of elaborating on your opinions.
And it would all just be shouting into the void without followers.
This is a lesson that aspiring writer, Orla, learns — in a rather more abrupt fashion than I did — when she moves to New York City in the early 2000s and tries to make a go at crafting a literary career.
Although she aspires to write a novel — and works to achieve this goal with a medium-level commitment — she also has to pay the bills. So she takes a job as a blogger for a women's blog — Lady-ish.
It's not long into her tenure as a hard-hitting reporter, publishing exposes on important topics like Which Celebrity Maybe Got Lipo (according to a doctor who has neither treated nor met them) and Which Kardashian is Most Likely to Actually Spit on a Panhandler, that she comes to a realization. Suddenly she sees that it’s less critical that you be important than it is that you appear important.
As luck would have it, about the same time, she starts rooming with Florence — or, “Floss” as she likes to be called, because given names are for bitches.
Floss has moved to NYC with one goal: to become significant.
And, towards this end, she spends all of her waking time — which, for the record, is usually between the hours of 6pm and 5am — attending parties in outfits that cover as little of her body as possible and making herself visible to the people who, in her perception, matter most.
When Orla realizes that her CraigsList-selected roommate has this, goal she rather rapidly comes to the realization that their relationship could be a symbiotic one.
So Orla and Floss start working in tandem.
When Floss goes out, Orla reports on it.
When Floss posts a video, Orla amplifies it.
And when Floss’s followers start to grow, Orla celebrates it.
But this is just half of our story.
In the temporally distant future — more than 4 decades after Orla and Floss began their dual effort to make Floss famous — lives Marlow.
Marlow has, from a very young age, lived in Constellation, California.
And, in Constellation, only one thing really matters: your followers.
Everyone in Constellation is a personality, followed in real-time by people around the globe.
Their lives are choreographed, their relationships planned, their stories pre-determined by writers who sit in a room, sipping stale coffee while they literally fucking play God.
Because Marlow has never really known a different life, she’s never thought to push back against the forces that try to keep her on her prescribed path.
But when her a new plot-point is thrown into her story — one that will irrevocably change Marlow’s life — she feels stifled, suffocated, surrounded by people less concerned with her as a human and more concerned with her as a product.
Suddenly Marlow is no longer satisfied to play her prescribed role. She needs to escape from it all. But, when the whole world thinks they know who you are, can you ever really break free from that image?
It was deep, meaningful, topical questions like this one that made this novel a profound success.
Both the world Megan Angelo built and the people with which she populated it were enigmatic and intriguing.
This is even more impressive given the scope of this novel, featuring two vastly different settings and two seemingly unrelated protagonists.
Angelo beautifully illustrated Orla’s mid-2010s, millennial life, capturing the rawness and grittiness and realistic messiness that typifies both the historical time period and the time in one’s life — when there is so much yet to do and you are so unsure that the success you seek will ever be within your grasp.
And, when shoved up against the impossible perfection of Constellation and the absolute certainty Marlow has about her future, it made a powerful juxtaposition.
All the complication that made Orla's life so challenging had been edited out of Marlow’s.
All of the flaws that made Orla so human were strategically covered on Marlow.
All of the faulty human emotions that lead Orla to make mistakes had been chemically dampened in Marlow.
Despite their differences, you wanted to root for them.
Both Orla — who is floundering her way through life, making more missteps than productive steps in the way that so many of us do when we seek significance — and Marlow — who has, for as long as she can remember, just been significant but now hungers for something more — are relatable and realistic.
And because they were so relatable, and because they were so realistic, and because I gave way more of a shit about what happened to them than I ever did about cash recycler technology, I couldn’t put this book down.
I raced towards the ending in the same way my 10-year-old races down the stairs on Christmas morning, risking life and limb to see the presents gathered under the tree.
Unfortunately, much like a child surrounded by tattered wrapping who suddenly realizes that the anticipation was sweeter than the gifts themselves, when I finally reached the ending I found myself a bit...disappointed.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the ending didn’t suck. I set this book down feeling satisfied and enlightened and intrigued.
But, of all the parts of the book, the ending was — IMO — the least effective.
My primary issue with the ending stemmed from its believability.
*SPOILER ALERT*
As the book draws to a close, Marlow finally connects with Orla — who we have learned is her biological mother.
But then Floss showed up.
And Orla — like immediately — forgave her for some pretty life-changing shit she had done years prior.
I mean, sure, that response was mature and enlightened and respectable. But it wasn't believable.
As a mother, I just don't understand how Orla — even after all of those years — could have just let bygones be bygones without even so much as a catfight or a verbal tongue lashing.
I mean Floss basically ripped Marlow from Orla’s womb, raised her as her own, and capitalized off of her as a human for decades.
And Orla's just.... chill?
*Nah, fam*
But, even with this minor deficiency, I found this book to be truly paradigm-shifting.
Despite the immediately positive association that the term “followers” has for me — someone who literally fucking lives to spend her time reading books and then shouting out into the internet about how good or bad or otherwise they really are — this book definitely doesn’t argue that followers are a necessity.
Quite the contrary, it’s a cautionary tale.
It’s a reminder of how we have lost sight of what’s important, as the profusion of technology designed to make life easier has paradoxically caused the world to grow more complicated and not less.
It’s a warning that it is all quite precarious, really.
It’s a prescient alarm, urging us to take a look around at the world in which we live and truly decide if we are happy with what our world has become.
It is a novel I will remember and recommend for years to come.
It earns 5 out of 5 cocktails.
This book would pair fucking beautifully with Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, another 5 out of 5 cocktail read for us. If you’re really feeling both industrious and disillusioned with the world in which we live, consider reading them back to back.
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