SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

An East Coast writer oversees the adaptation of his novel to film in a hellish version of Los Angeles.

Patrick Hamlin arrives in Hollywood to assume a vague role on the set of the movie version of his latest novel. But everything about the process is befuddling—the movie script barely resembles his story, and his role is relegated to listening to the semiphilosophical ramblings of the production assistants and transporting Cassidy Carter, the tempestuous former child actor–turned–B-lister that is starring in the film. Patrick is increasingly alarmed by the things he witnesses: Wildfires flare constantly; everyone drinks a luxe synthetic product called WAT-R that is “the same as water, just a little bit more so.” And there is a mysterious “dementia” that is afflicting people seemingly at random, regardless of age. As the surrealism of the film-set experiences blend with the nightmarishness of LA, Patrick is also coming unglued by developments at home: His emotionally fragile wife and their 9-year-old daughter are staying at an upstate New York commune, where they participate in group mourning rituals as a kind of ecological grief work. It isn’t long before everything in Patrick’s life feels like it’s spiraling toward disaster. Kleeman’s novel is idea-driven, a critique of the artifice of consumerism and Hollywood culture in which that artifice is heightened on each page, from characters talking in polished soliloquies to the ominous ubiquity of WAT-R bottles in everyone’s hands. Everything in this world is deliberately just a little bit off, like the slight telltale warp of a Photoshopped selfie. While some readers might find the novel overly conceptual, it’s undeniably fun to watch Kleeman juggle genre, from mystery to domestic drama, from cli-fi to ghost story.

An admirably eclectic take on environmental dystopia.