From the Publisher
WIRED's Best Summer Reads
REFINERY29's Best Books of Summer
LITERARY HUB's Most Anticipated Summer Novels——
A Touch of Jen is bananas good. Funny and sharp and surprising and bittersweet. Just [three chef's kiss emojis]."
—Carmen Maria Machado
Morgan has created a fabulous monster here, legitimately Frankensteined herself a wicked, unflinching, dynamite novel out of razor-sharp dialogue, toxic social media culture, and the nonsense notion that the self is just another brand to be endlessly plumbed for content. Wildly hilarious and absolutely terrifying, A Touch of Jen is truly a touch of genius. I loved every minute of it.”
—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of MOSTLY DEAD THINGS
BOOKLIST
Morgan masterfully brings dark comedy and psychedelic horror together at a slow-burning pace. Her mundane but over-the-top characters and brilliant dialogue add to the surreal and fantastical tone of this spellbinding book.
author of PRIVATE CITIZENS Tony Tulathimutte
The funniest (and most twisted) book of the year.
Booklist
Morgan masterfully brings dark comedy and psychedelic horror together at a slow-burning pace…A spellbinding book.”
Literary Hub
This novel will be the most fun you’ll have this summer: a millennial comedy of manners that…morphs into a weird horror novel.”
New York Times bestselling author Kristen Arnett
Wildly hilarious and absolutely terrifying, A Touch of Jen is truly a touch of genius. I loved every minute of it.”
author of REMAINDER and SATIN ISLAND Tom McCarthy
A Touch of Jen is hipster noir, acerbic social parable and slasher gore-fest: as if Patricia Highsmith, Chris Kraus, and Ann Quin all crashed a Hamptons beach party, and John Carpenter dropped in with some weed.
LITERARY HUB Emily Temple
Um, holy shit. Or maybe it’s better to say: unholy shit. Whether you’re on a post-vaccine rampage or not, this novel will be the most fun you’ll have this summer: a millennial comedy of manners that, just at the point where these things usually fizzle and disappoint, takes A Turn and morphs into a weird horror novel… I don’t want to tell you any more, so look, just trust me on this one.
Kirkus Reviews
2021-05-05
Remy and Alicia’s relationship, founded on a shared fixation with Instagram-savvy hipster it girl Jen, enters strange new territory when Jen becomes a part of their off-screen lives.
Remy and Alicia are two 30-something restaurant servers trying to make it work in New York City. Their relationship is founded on their shared ennui, biting critiques of their peers, and obsessive interest in Jen, a social media savvy, globe-trotting former co-worker of Remy’s who is out of their league but never off their minds. Their obsession with Jen’s perfectly Instagrammable authenticity (gleaned from her social media feeds, which they compulsively scrutinize) oscillates between a kind of bitter hero worship and an increasingly involved sexual and lifestyle role-playing that casts Alicia as Alicia-as-Jen and Remy as a stranger, the gardener, even sometimes himself. When a chance encounter with the actual Jen at an Apple store results in an offhanded invitation to join her and her wealthy boyfriend, Horus, on a surfing weekend at Montauk, the already dotted lines between Remy’s and Alicia’s true selves and the selves they have crafted around their fantasy Jen become even more fragmented. This is particularly true for Alicia, whose self-image is significantly impacted by childhood trauma and whose social gymnastics among the pitch-perfect millennial hipster tropes she encounters at Montauk are as painful as they are funny. Back home in the city, Alicia enters a deepening spiral of Jen-obsession, but just when Morgan seems set on a deep dive into Alicia’s vulnerability to society’s constant pressure to display the most authentic version of an invented self, the plot takes a dramatic twist. The last third of the book is embroiled in the kind of gore usually reserved for less introspective literary genres, with sometimes mixed results.
An ambitious debut which captures the loneliness of the internet age in deft strokes in spite of a slightly confusing end.
