Agnes Lives!

A day-in-the-life debut novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next Soul Cycle class. New York City, 2014. Agnes Maurer is seeking the appropriate killer. Candidates include: an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set; a Craigslist gun dealer; and Agnes‘ toxic novelist boyfriend. In her hunt, she stumbles into unexpected detours: cleansing crystals, must-have handbags, a Tesla ride where someone else dies, naked housekeeping, and an encounter with deep, dark water. Through a murderously attuned kaleidoscope stained with image, money, and sex, Agnes‘ dwindling hours of icon-filled privilege become a breathless search for self. Agnes Lives! is a killer exhibition, an obsessive rendering of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way. Newton‘s prose is disturbingly fun, relentless, shattering. A crafted study of mid-aughts values that have brought us to where we are now. The ping-pong pacing crashes into a worthy, intense denouement.