Book Review: "Followers" by Megan Angelo
Synopsis: Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss—a striving, wannabe A-lister—who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss’s methods are a little shady—and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can’t be wrong.
Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity—twelve million loyal followers—Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.
Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we’ll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection. - Graydon House
Rating (out of 5): 3.5
Trigger Warnings: attempted sexual assault, terrorism (emotional and otherwise), garbage men
Review: When I was in law school, I took a class on Information Privacy that basically made me want to go off the grid forever. This was in Fall 2011, so I clearly couldn’t have imagined where social media (at that point, pretty much just Facebook and Twitter; I didn’t even have an Instagram yet) would go and how many people would make their living from it. I’ve often thought about how scary it is for people to predicate their incomes on the vagaries of followers and an algorithm that no one understands — how will one explain what an Influencer is on their resume?! — and so, in many ways, many of the warnings of the “Followers” rang true with me.
This is another book where you’re dropped pretty much into the action with some oddly named protagonists — Orla, Floss, Marlow, etc — and at the end of the first chapter, I was sure this was going to be a DNF for me. I’m just being honest. Ultimately, I’m glad I made myself read a little bit further (I try to make it at least 50 pages before I give up on something completely), as I ended up mostly enjoying this book.
There are two intersecting stories here: of two twenty-something girls living in New York in 2015/2016 (Orla, Floss) trying to make it big on Instagram, and of Marlow, the ultimate influencer in 2051. We are told from the beginning about a mysterious event that changed everything, and Marlow is the beneficiary of that system; she lives her life on camera, sponsored by an anti-depressant, in a USG facility called Constellation.
The “Constellation” story line, focused on Marlow and her family life, was my preferred. It read as almost dystopian, tbh, and I mean that as a compliment. I can actually imagine a world like that of 2051 in this novel — the govnemrnt has control of the Internet, people view the lives of real people as the ultimate voyeurism, and everything is sponsored. It does seem like the next natural progression of internet culture in the United States, and as the 2016 election has shown, we are vulnerable online in ways that we didn’t imagine. The cataclysmic event referenced in the book serves as an amazing divide (before/after), and the type of terrorism that we should all be on the look out for — I promise not to go more political than that…today.
Back in “current” day, I found Floss annoying, Orla grating, and Anton dumb, but I still wanted to know what happened to them and how their stories ended; none of them are sympathetic characters, at all, but they are compelling. Watching how they manufactured celebrity in the social media age was fascinating, and I think a fair assessment of how this often happens in our Instagram culture. Maybe I’m showing my age here, but I don’t really get YouTubers and professional influencers; how do you start? What is the career progression? What is the end goal besides being famous?
As you know, we’re spoiler free over here, so I’m not going to spoil anything except to say that I hated the end of this book; the last 30 pages drove me absolutely nuts and made me drop down my rating. I’m not sure how I would have ended it (there’s a reason I only critique literacy fiction and don't write it), but it lost so much of the urgency and the suspense and just wrapped like a bad sitcom. It did take away from my enjoyment of the book, but not enough that I didn’t want to review it (obviously); so consider it my good deed of the day that I’m providing you this warning.
That said, it was an interesting commentary about celebrity and American culture (and there were some hilarious moments re: social media and our current political environment!), as well as the implications of both sharing your life online and trying to live a private existence. That was the best part to me, as well as the unraveling of the central mystery — the “family history being based on a lie” thing mentioned in the synopsis — it just felt like the author didn’t have a concrete ending in mind when she came up with the premise.
TL;DR: A darkly funny and somewhat suspenseful novel about the ridiculous power of social media in our day-to-day lives, with some bonus commentary on influencer culture.
If you liked this, try these:
“The Circle” by Dave Eggers (one of my old favorites, and a book that really makes me want to go live in the woods like Ron Swanson tbh)
”Recursion” by Blake Crouch (my review here!)
