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A fluid but oblique and inventive literary homage to lesbian pulp � the title’s taken from Kimberley Kemp’s (aka Gilbert Fox) 1960s novel. Dorn’s narrative centres on flailing writer Astrid who’s living in LA and teetering on the edge of a personal abyss. Outspoken Astrid’s on the verge of being cancelled after an incident during a recent book tour, and she’s torn between two women: the oddly alluring but erratic Ivy, a PhD student who’s analysing lesbian pulp fiction and older, outwardly self-assured artist Penelope. Astrid’s drifting, trying to overcome an on-and-off addiction to recreational drugs and an equally damaging tendency towards relationships centred on sex, drama and toxic romance � dynamics that mirror lesbian pulp themes. Astrid’s spiky, openly scathing about everything and everyone around her, and irreverent in a way that often borders on offensive but she’s also acidly witty and shrewdly observant when it comes to LA’s creative, lesbian communities. Her struggles, her dating experiences, her thoughts about literature from Patricia Highsmith to Donna Tartt, her diatribes on her writing group Sapphic Scribes, on LA’s lesbian culture and her attempts to find a way to ditch the messier aspects of her existence were weirdly compelling, I was gripped throughout. Dorn’s style reminded me a little of authors like Halle Butler mixed with more than a dash of Emily M. Danforth, her story's packed with wry, pithy commentaries on contemporary American society; and despite Astrid’s less likeable qualities I couldn’t help rooting for her.

Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Simon and Schuster for an ARC