Amina Akhtar, #FASHIONVICTIM

This is one of the more unusual, original books I've read this year: darkly comic and satiric about the fashion industry. I might not have picked it up, except that the author is one on a panel with me next week; but I'm glad I did. Quite naturally the novel draws comparisons to The Devil Wears Prada ... but it lacks the easy division between evil boss/ambitious but abused and highly likable underling. Instead we have a young woman protagonist who is desperate and driven to murder by the fashion industry and the insanely #selfie world she lives in. The novel is clever, and twisted, and yet despite the number of characters whose vocabulary is mostly "OMG" and meme-y phrases (or because of them), it shines a sharp light on the kind of ruthlessness and the alienation of language from meaning and authenticity that the social media culture endorses and creates.