In “Television,” Bojack Horseman meets Joan Didion in this smart, sly, and irresistibly stylish debut novel about a jaded movie star and the two differently conflicted women in his orbit.
This novel announces the arrival of a profound new talent in American fiction. A prose-forward, voice-driven novel perfect for fans of Lisa Halliday, Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, Deborah Levy, Ali Smith, and Helen DeWitt.
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In This Spotlight On Television
About Television
Some people you meet them and you imagine this movie together. The two of you make a kind of movie and then it’s over. Other people, what you imagine isn’t a movie, because it keeps going. It’s television . . . If you can’t see how romantic television is, you’re blind.
An aging, A-list movie star lotteries off the entirety of his mega-million blockbuster salary to a member of the general viewing public before taking up with a much younger Instagram model. His non-famous best friend (and often lover) looks on impassively, while recollecting their twenty-odd years of unlikely connection. And an aspiring filmmaker, unknown to them both, labors over a script about best friends and lovers while longing for the financial freedom to make great art.
Told in their alternating, intricately linked perspectives, Television is a funny, philosophically astute novel about phenomenal luck, whether windfall or chance encounter. Like Joan Didion’s classic Play It as It Lays, but speaking to an irrevocably changed Hollywood, it portrays a culture in crisis and the disparities in wealth, beauty, talent, gender, and youth at the heart of contemporary American life. In this glittering but strange new world, lit up by social media and streaming services—what, if not love, can be counted in your favor?
With plays in chronology, bright, nimble dialogue, and a profoundly modern style, Lauren Rothery’s debut novel is an arresting feat of literary impressionism and marks the arrival of significant new talent to the landscape of American fiction.
JOAN DIDION MEETS BOJACK HORSEMAN: Equal parts entertaining and existential, funny and philosophical, this is the story of a Hollywood star struggling to come to terms with his artistic bankruptcy–and rendered in a prose style of startling intensity and intelligence, reminiscent of early Joan Didion.
A CLASSIC ARC, SET IN MODERN HOLLYWOOD: Friends turn to lovers in this sly and sexy critique of contemporary American life, tackling themes such as wealth and gender disparities, the state of artmaking, and the entertainment industry after the advent of social media and streaming services.
Praise for Television
“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 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
“Astounding…cool as a cucumber and glittering with startling observations about love, technology, work, media and film. Plus: it’s funny.”—Molly Young
About Lauren Rothery, Author of Television
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. Lauren has spent nearly a decade working in and around indie film sets and has written this novel with intimate knowledge of the industry.
You can connect with Lauren Rothery on their website.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Ecco | HarperCollins
ISBN Hardcover 9780063443327
Pub Date: Dec 2, 2025
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