Her debut novel is a dark Southern gothic with a shocking murder at its heart, and everyone is reading it. Maud Dixon is the pen name of this season’s literary success story. We don’t actually read any of Florence’s writing, but it’s clear it’s sophomoric and unformed, and man, that tragedy of gaining just enough skill and understanding to realize you’re unskilled is sympathetic. She’s now come too far to ever fit back into her Florida hometown, and she doesn’t match her mother’s ideas of success. There’s just so much wanting in her, with no path to getting what she wants.

I already love this sort of snark at Manhattan pretensions, and I was sold on Florence about 5 pages in. It’s just as cringey and as ballsy as that sounds. When a higher-up hookup think he can take advantage of her, she awkwardly attempts blackmail for a publishing in. You learn exactly what Florence wants and what she’s willing to do to get it early on. painfully aware that she’s a struggling outsider in the city, and willing to do whatever she needs to do. In the beginning, she reminds me a bit of Louise in Social Creature. She wants to be a writer, but the prep-school Manhattan literary crowd has their own language and culture, and it’s not something she learned in Florida. In the beginning of Who Is Maud Dixon?, by Alexandra Andrews, Florence is new to New York and new to publishing, discovering constantly just how much she doesn’t understand. But still! If you’re the kind of reader who doesn’t like hints before you read, skip this review. Mostly mild spoilers, I mean, about the character development and my intense book feelings while reading, not a total plot reveal. It’s almost impossible to review Who Is Maud Dixon? without letting some spoilers slip.

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