The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy
Synopsis.
A “dazzling” (Bryan Washington, author of Memorial and Lot ) and brilliantly satirical debut novel for fans of Women Talking and Red Clocks about two best friends—a disgraced influencer and a struggling actor—who form The Atmosphere, a cult designed to reform problematic men.
Sasha Marcus was once the epitome of contemporary success: an internet sensation, social media darling, and a creator of a high profile wellness brand for women. But a confrontation with an abusive troll has taken a horrifying turn, and now she’s at rock bottom: canceled and doxxed online, fired from her waitress job and fortressed in her apartment while men’s rights protestors rage outside. All that once glittered now condemns.
Sasha confides in her oldest childhood friend, Dyson—a failed actor with a history of body issues—who hatches a plan for Sasha to restore her reputation by becoming the face of his new business venture, The Atmosphere: a rehabilitation community for men. Based in an abandoned summer camp and billed as a workshop for job training, it is actually a rigorous program designed to rid men of their toxic masculinity and heal them physically, emotionally, and socially. Sasha has little choice but to accept. But what horrors await her as the resident female leader of a crew of washed up, desperate men? And what exactly does Dyson want?
Explosive and wickedly funny, this “Fight Club for the millennial generation” (Mat Johnson, author of Pym) peers straight into the dark heart of wellness and woke-ness, self-mythology and self-awareness, by asking what happens when we become addicted to the performance of ourselves
The Review
Savage
This book is SAVAGE!! It doesn’t seem like it in the beginning. It’s snarky and intelligent in the beginning, but the savage comes later.
If you get the humor and not the insult, you’ll appreciate it at page one. This book was what I would shelve as “witty” and “dark humor.” I don’t think it’s for everyone.
But one of the characters, at least for me, really starts to come to her full FRUITION around 2/3 in. I love her. She reminds me of the MC in MY YEAR OF YEAR AND RELAXATION. They would loathe each other more than they loathed themselves.
The book is NOT trying to be the next FIGHT CLUB. It does play a quick homage to it. It is written for what is going on now. Fight Club was vastly written with political, societal, and psychological constructs.
THE ATMOSPHERIANS is as well but where the books differ is in its very real-life and current details. THE ATMOSPHERIANS will not age as well as the FIGHT CLUB.
Also, Fight Club is mentioned in the book, which would never happen in Fight Club.
Ha
And although the characters are cult-like, reformationist, the author was not trying to recreate Tyler Durden. The characters within this book stand on their own, and do not need alters.
Does the fact that it’s reminiscent of another book take away from the book or the writing or the characters?
Not at all!!
And it didn’t take away from my enjoyment either.
Don’t miss this one!
One of my favorites of the year!
Five Stars!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks to netgalley and Atria Books for a copy of this title in change for an honest review!
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