Gag Reflex

Elle Nash's novel Nudes explores the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and the quest for self-identification of a teenager through diaristic ellipses. It follows Lucy, who struggles with an eating disorder and navigates her messy transition into adulthood online. The book was dubbed a 2018 Debut Writer to Watch by Publishers Weekly and was an SPD Best Seller.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 180 pages
Publication date: 19 July 2022
Publisher: Clash Books

Elle Nash's debut novel, "Nudes," has been dubbed a 2018 Debut Writer to Watch by Publishers Weekly and is featured on Lit Hubs Most Anticipated Books of 2021. Through diaristic ellipses, Nash crafts an origin story of obsessional masochism, drawing on the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and grappling with an eating disorder. Indie cult author Elle Nash paints a realistic and poignant portrait of a teenager's quest for self-identification on both sides of the computer screen. Using Livejournal entries, we meet our protagonist, Lucy, in her messy transition into adulthood, grappling with calorie counts, boys, and being honest with who she is only online. Following up her cult fiction debut, "Animals Eat Each Other," Nash shows she belongs in the same camp as exciting feminist literary disrupters like Melissa Broder and Alissa Nutting.

In 2005, Lucy shambles through the last weeks of her senior year of high school, jonesing for a thinner body, desperate to connect with another human. Who is reflected back at her when she is sleeping with someone, when she is puking into the toilet bowl? Who is reflected back when she is alone? Only the internet knows, where she muses on the concept of her "self" through her Livejournal, with a cadre of online friends who are definitely NOT pro-anorexic. Everyone is sick here, but at least they understand.

Weight: 216g
Dimension: 126 x 204 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781955904025