Description: "Who needed to leave? Who needed to find the right place for them or the right people? Not me. I would never write about Los Angeles for as long as I lived. A handsome, aging movie star lotteries off his mega-million-dollar salary to a member of the general viewing public before taking up with a much younger Instagram model. His unbeautiful, non-famous best friend (and sometimes lover) looks on impassively while recollecting their twenty-odd years of unlikely connection. And a young aspiring filmmaker struggles to write a viable script, longing for the perfect circumstances that would finally afford her the freedom to make great art. And isn't it the meek that shall inherit the earth?"--Provided by publisher.
Brief description:
Lauren Rothery was born in London and raised in San Diego. She spent her twenties writing and directing short films and music videos between New York and Los Angeles. In 2020, she moved to Europe and began writing fiction. Television is her first novel.
Review Quotes:
"[Television] has the rhythm of clever conversation, and casual erudition... Rothery's book is funny, thinky and with a style all her own." - The New York Times
"Set in Los Angeles, this ruminative novel alternates in perspective between a blockbuster actor, his best friend and sometime lover, and an aspiring screenwriter...it considers questions of artistic and philanthropic legacy." - The New Yorker, Best Books of 2025
"[A] stylish debut novel." - Los Angeles Times, "Ten Books to Read in December"
"Rothery's debut novel, Television, hits the mark with unerring accuracy, understanding, and--dare we say it--affection... Rothery has a gimlet ear for dialogue and the myriad ways unhappy people, no matter the generation, find to torture one another." - Alta
"At once classic and of the moment, it skips across storylines like a flat stone over a deep lake...[Lauren Rothery is] a new novelist hitting a stride usually saved for later, with confidence that feels from another, less nervous era." - The Paris Review, Favorite Books of 2025
"Her prose rises off the page with champagne-bubble effervescence." - Irish Times
"In this accomplished and beautifully written debut novel, Lauren Rothery offers a sharp-edged homage to Hollywood past and present and a knowing look at the tension between fame and art...Stylish, smart, and glamorous, Television is catnip for lovers of literary fiction." - Shelf Awareness
"Astounding...cool as a cucumber and glittering with startling observations about love, technology, work, media and film. Plus: it's funny." - Molly Young
"Television is a rare thing: a work of formal ingenuity that dismantles the narrative constraints of celebrity, memory, and media. Even as its characters grapple with artifice--in love, in the performances of self--the novel is plangent. It is an actor's monologue and a biographer's aside, a love letter and a critique of attention. In other words, this is a novel as strange, seductive, and inescapable as film itself." - Zain Khalid, author of Brother Alive
"Television is as stylish as it is substantial. A timely and timeless novel for readers of Joan Didion and Gary Indiana. An excellent first book." - Stephanie Wambugu, author of Lonely Crowds
"Television sent me on paths I didn't expect, turning timeless topics such as love, lust, and success into characters, at once elusive and incessant, as they are in life. With quick, surefooted language sometimes giving way to epiphanic fragments that nearly break the fourth wall, we're on high alert that nothing is so easily explained by some idea of reality, especially when actors are involved." - Natasha Stagg, author of Grand Rapids