Subletting in a shared apartment which looks like a stage-set in Koreatown, Los Angeles, Fiona Alison Duncan encounters what she terms the Real, one of several capitalised concepts in her debut metafictional novel Exquisite Mariposa, whose utility consists in their incoherence, spacious signifiers by which to structure one’s life. In the wake of a failed reality TV deal, Fiona embarks on a calculated program of self-transformation within the existential vertigo and lifestyle atomization of art-world-adjacent Los Angeles.

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