The Smash-Up

a delicious satire from a breakout voice in literary fiction

By: Ali Benjamin

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Paperback | 3 January 2022 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
400 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.5 x 13 x 19.8

Paperback

$28.75

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AN OF-THE-MOMENT NOVEL FOR READERS OF FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE

After years spent in the city, working with his business partner Randy on Brand media, Ethan finds himself in the quiet, closed-off town of Starkfield. His wife Zenobia is perpetually distracted by the swirling #MeToo politics, the Kavanaugh hearings, and her duties to the feminist activism group she formed: All Them Witches. Ethan finds himself caught between their regular meetings at his home and the battle to get his livewire daughter Alex to sleep.

But the new, stilted rhythm of his life is interrupted when he receives a panicked message. Accusations. Against Randy. A slew of them. And Ethan is abruptly forced to question everything: his past, his future, his marriage, and what he values most.

Unrelenting in its satire, The Smash-up jolts you into the twisted psyche of successful brand advertising, where historic exploitation is only ever a panicked phone-call away. With magnetic energy and doses of comic wit, Benjamin creates a world of social media algorithms, extreme polarization, the collapsing of identity into tweet-sized spaces, and the spectre of violence that can be found even in the quietest places.

About the Author

Ali Benjamin is the author of the young adult novel The Thing About Jellyfish, an international bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. The Next Great Paulie Fink was named a top children's book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, the New York Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Her work has been published in more than twenty-five languages in more than thirty countries.

Originally from the New York City area, she now lives in Massachusetts. This is her first adult novel.

Industry Reviews

The Smash-Up is an incandescent meteor of a novel, blazing through the preoccupations of our time with wit, originality and compassion. Timely, risky and dazzling.

Sharply funny, perceptive, and surprising at every turn, The Smash-Up is a story that's acid-etched and full of heart, intimate, and relevant as it explores the impact on a family of the collapse of everything in this unsettled, unsettling world. Ali Benjamin is Edith Wharton with fresh eyes.

A great page-turner, this book could only have been written now. It made me cry, it made me laugh, it made me think. Every woman should read this book. Every woman, every feminist, every activist. And then, together we should all go and Burn It All Down.

Benjamin's immediately engaging writing captures the complicated emotions and biting humour of these bruising times and their impact on relationships. - Booklist

Benjamin is an absolutely brilliant satirist and deftly juxtaposes the battlegrounds of marriage, parenthood and middle-class aspiration with the fight for truth and justice in the bigger political picture. - Daily Mail

Smart, funny and topical, this is an astute story of a once-happy couple dealing with temptation, familiarity, fury and the very real chance that their relationship will be smashed to smithereens under the pressure. - Daily Mirror

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