There are times that I'd read a 5000 words short story then write a 5000 words feels after. With Social Creatures, I sure feel a lot, but considering 90% was in a WTF kind of way (and out of which 90% of WTF are good WTF), I'm a bit stumped for words.

As urban horror it's pretty horrifying, and you are definitely not supposed to take everything literally and overthink about the implausibly. There are lots of comparisons with Mr Ripley, Gone Girl, and You; I'd say if anything it skirts close to Yellowface but they are more like two facets of the two similar car crashes that it's unfair to compare it with Yellowface. I can't read You for being too hypothetically terrifying. I can't read Aku no Hana for being too much like myself as a pre teen (don't ask). I admit that Social Creatures is more like looking into an exotic safari, where the exoticism are the rich white stereotype It Girls of New York that I suspect no real It Girls ever behave like, but what do I know.

The emotionally parasitic and abusive Lavinia was fucking awful. The equally emotionally parasitic and murderous Louise was fucking awful. The shitty hipster writer wannabe boyfriends were fucking awful. The teen sister Cordelia was probably the least insufferable out if the cast, yet if she were in any other novels she can easily be the worst. I think this is what the Gone Girl comparison is about, with a cast like this it's almost a crass schadenfreude porn for the readers.

I admit I absolutely do not get any of them, from the codependency, to the emotional leeching, to the using allosexuality as power control, the heterosupremacy, to weird fuck internalised homophobia (consensual gay bad) while pretty much sexually assaulting each other (non consensual gay good?), to the emptiest vanity, to the pro-ana encouraged by their equally shitty families.

I've seen enough glimpse of people like this IRL to think it's not entirely implausible. I also entirely admit it's just wtf to me. The most incomprehensible aspect was somehow Louise managed to blown $100,000 on bar tabs over six months. Like how. Was she drinking literal molten platnium?

I'm saying this as a Gillian Flynn fan who adores Sharp Objects/Dark Places but didn't really "get" Gone Girl. Had Social Creatures been written by someone like me I'd really worry about out of their way othering of an bunch of easy punching bags, but given I know Tara Isabella Burton knows more about this particular culture than I ever will, I'm going to just say. A roomful of punching bags dressed in designer gear is what this book is. Thanks for the fish tank full of prettiest yet pettiest highbred Betta fish battle royale.

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