“Cat Marnell is a wizard of the gorgeous and the abject at once. The Bored and the Beautiful is a story of glamour, grasping, loneliness, desire, addiction, and wandering. Propulsive and electric, it is also the deeply human story of an artist finding herself.”—Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want and Flight
“The Bored and the Beautiful is a propulsive and heart-twisting parable of art, glamour, beauty, and fading youth (think Cheryl Strayed meets Ottessa Moshfegh), so unlike any novel I’ve ever read. Readers will love rooting for Dizzy Calatrava as she navigates the waves of the world’s greatest city, spilling pills and drinks in her wake, struggling with addiction and self-loathing while searching for redemption. A self-knowing and riveting debut.”—Bruce Holsinger, nationally bestselling author of The Gifted School and Culpability (an Oprah’s Book Club pick)
“What a thrill that Cat Marnell—one of our best living documentarians of addiction and the glamorous frivolities of New York—has at last given her fans a novel. The Bored and the Beautiful is so much more than a morality tale about drugs and disease, so much more than a time capsule about fashion and trend. This is a riveting portrait of the writer as a young woman, a book about the redemptive power of art itself, a hell of a read, a story that made me happy to be alive.”—Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Entitlement
“The survival diary of a girl on the scene, from New York to London, Thailand to Ibiza, and destinations in between. A treasure map of heartaches drawn by the capable hand of a writer who knows, The Bored and the Beautiful is the brilliant crystallization of possibilities realized, a tabloid-noir of glam and struggle, a triumph of glitter in the streets ‘where rats turn into stars!’”—Nico Walker, author of Cherry