'Inhaled...will be huge' LORDE

They would accept the reality I had put before them as if it had been that way all along. For that was their own condition: created one day from nothing, living from there on out in their families.

The book's protagonist has much in common with her Sims she creates in the opening pages of Nora Obeid's debut novel BESTER WROOK. They all have Needs-food, a bed, a family, a house. But perhaps more important are their Wants, and the eternal struggle to clearly identify them. Luckily for the Sims, none of them are Palestinian-Lebanese-Irish-American tweens during the early years of the War on Terror. They mainly just Want to perfect their Lobster Thermidor or play the violin really, really well. But as the lines between the game and the twelve-year old gamer become increasingly porous, both of their Wants and Needs ever-expanding, she begins to forget who the main character of her story truly is.


Nora Obeid's debut has been likened to Miranda July in its attunement to the absurd, of Sheila Heti in its playful existentialism, and of Patricia Lockwood in its understanding of the virtual world's impact on our real psyches. Slipping deftly between irony and reverence, BESTER WROOK is both wildly fun and deceptively profound.