Eight books about girls growing up on the internet

Andy Anderegg was born in Austin, Texas and lives in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of Kansas. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Dzanc Books’ Prize for Fiction and named a finalist for The Clay Reynolds Novella Prize from Texas Review Press.

Her debut novel is Plum.

At Electric Lit Anderegg tagged "eight books about girls growing up on the internet — and the fallout of all that screen time." One title on the list:

The New Me by Halle Butler

A temp job, disaffection, Chicago. After a day temping, tights sagging, Millie goes home and opens her laptop to comfort herself, watches serialized murder documentaries — “Someone is in the house! I wish.” Watching TV on the laptop, even though she doesn’t like TV, even though she wants to be the kind of person who listens to music as she cooks after work.

As Millie’s self destruction compounds, her life frays more and more, and she pulls on the fraying strings: “As an exercise, to show myself what it will be like to have more money, I go to the Whole Foods and spend $60 on things that will not last long.” It’s a dizzying, addictive, pleasingly tiring announcement of the false promise of self reinvention.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue