Mississippi author Hallie Elizabeth Newton‘s Agnes Lives! is a day-in-the-life novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next SoulCycle class. Newton will be at Off Square Books at 5:30 pm Tuesday, August 25 to read and sign copies of the book.
Square Books general manager Lyn Roberts describes the book as “a frenetic, darkly funny novel about the struggles of young women, loneliness, and the emptiness of society—even, or rather especially, for those who seem to have everything. With echoes of Bright Lights, Big City and Ulysses, this is a brilliant debut from a new Mississippi talent.”
Set in New York City in 2014, the book centers on Agnes Maurer, who seeks a willing murderer and wonders what she should wear. Candidates include: an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set; an eccentric designer from her past; and Agnes’s cruel novelist boyfriend. As she Ubers from Upper East Side shopping to Craigslist gun deals, Agnes’ desperation becomes an exhibition, a swan song of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way. Newton’s prose is disturbingly fun, relentless, and shattering; the story a crafted study of existential despair that culminates in a worthy, intense denouement.
Hallie Elizabeth Newton received her first screenplay credit for At Any Price, released in 2013 by Sony Picture Classics. In 2016, she received the Goldwater Fellowship to earn a master’s in creative writing from New York University. Her short story “Man Made” won first prize for fiction in the Columbia Journal 2020 Winter Contest. Her work is forthcoming from American Chordata. She lives between New York and the Deep South.
About the Author
