Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, follows both themes.
Oyler’s bugbears as a critic are the rise of American autofiction and, not coincidentally, the evolution of writers’ public personal brands on the internet, that is to say, social media: the gap that can grow between persona and work. Her reviews, in publications like The New York Times, London Review of Books, and Bookforum, provoke such discussion that they formed the backbone of a critical essay about “viral book reviews” in The Nation.
She has aimed her keyboard at authors including Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Sally Rooney, and Jenny Offill, often trying to puncture a cloud of hype that has obscured the true substance of a given book or writer.
Lauren Oyler is best known as a fearsome critic, the most teeth-bared practitioner this side of the Atlantic (the ocean, not the magazine).
