Generation Z, so we are told by a certain contingent, are entitled and nihilistic brats. They are so consumed by irony and so deathly afraid of sincerity they will never produce anything of real value. This is a prevailing picture of the young: poisoned cynics destroying the shibboleths our world has long functioned on. They are immiserating the cultural landscape, too. The source of all this rancour? The internet, duh!
Honor Levy’s debut work of fiction is unlikely to disabuse readers of such notions. In My First Book the Californian writer rattles through unconnected stories about young people at breakneck speed: their lives online and offline, how the internet has infected and coloured everything they think, say and do. It is messy, ill-disciplined and uninterested in presenting today’s youth as model citizens. Critics have been wondering for some time now where the great internet fiction is. Here, at least, is an attempt.
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