Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this visceral, darkly hilarious, and surprisingly moving debut novel about a charismatic misfit who livestreams herself for seven straight days to raise money for her comatose sister's life support
Propulsive, witty and deranged - I couldnt put it down. If youre a fan of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, you will love this book. Nussaibah Younis, author of Fundamentally
Fans of Melissa Broder, Rufi Thorpe and Ottessa Moshfegh will laugh, cringe, empathise, and be mesmerised by the spectacle of one womans attempt to solve all her financial and emotional problems in the most adventurous, public and high-stakes way possible. Just Watch Me is addictive and propulsive. Emily Gould, author of Perfect Tunes
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. Shes behind on rent for her bathroom-less studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), shes being plagued by perpetual, spiking stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plant propagations to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise $14,000 for a week of private life support for Daisy.
In the dungeon of her stream, Dell is in control, banishing those who dont abide by her terms of engagement and steadily rising up the platforms ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. On a dare, she discovers that she has a talent for eating spicy food, and her streaming fame explodes as her pepper consumption graduates from jalapeño to habanero to ghost. Finally, Dell is good at somethingbut as her behavior becomes riskier and riskier and a troll-turned-incel threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dells livestream, Just Watch Me careens us through a nonstop week in the life of this charismatic misfit with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenbergs debut is both an incisive, zippy tragicomedy about the internet economy as well as a moving meditation on love, loss, and forgiveness.
