'A beautiful fever dream, a slippery, captivating pleasure' KRISTEN ARNETT, author of With Teeth

'Drew me in like a whirlpool - a wild spin into loneliness and desire' Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies

'Brittany Newell is truly one to watch!' EMMA JANE UNSWORTH, author of Animals

A blazing novel following a young woman on a wild, hallucinogenic quest for love and selfhood in San Francisco's seedy underground.

Baby is a dancer at a strip club and at the age of 27, she's feeling lost. It seems that only Dino, her sweet, cross-dressing, drug-dealing ex-boyfriend can keep her afloat. So, when Dino disappears without so much as a kiss goodbye, she plunges headfirst into San Francisco's shady erotic underground to find him.

Baby searches through dive bars and old haunts, at the club and at the sex dungeon where she has a part-time dominatrix gig. She encounters clients like Simon, a recluse paying her for increasingly bizarre "favours" and a philosophizing suicide fetishist named 'Nobody', as well as coworkers like Emeline, the balletic new hire who seems to want to steal Baby's whole identity, starting with her underwear.

It's not long before she starts to find cryptic notes hidden in her belongings and realises her search is attracting the wrong kind of attention. With her grip on reality loosening and the clock ticking, will Baby manage to put together the pieces and find the only man she's ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first?

Manically smart, brutally funny and deeply sexy, Soft Core is a book about desire, fantasy, and true love - like no other.

About the Author

Brittany Newell's debut novel Oola was published when she was 21 years old. Her work has been published in Granta, N+1, The New York Times; the first chapter of Soft Core was published as a short story called 'Baby' in N_1. In 2021, she was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission that enabled her to write Soft Core.

Reviews

Praise for Soft Core:

'Soft Core is a beautiful fever dream, a slippery, captivating pleasure, a love story stuffed inside a wadded nylon stocking. It's a novel that wants to get close to you. It wants to bite your neck; it's the actual promise of a hickey. I can't remember the last book I read that was even half as tender. I ate it up' Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth

'Drew me in like a whirlpool - a wild spin into loneliness and desire' Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies

'I was consumed by Soft Core. Baby feels familiar yet perfectly strange, like a kid sister and a seasoned old soul mixed into one voice of undeniable allure. Newell portrays a San Francisco of dark beauty with an endless revolving door of characters sketched out with great wit, tenderness and generosity. Funny, sexy and surprising, I loved it' Pip Finkemeyer, author of Sad Girl Novel

'Brittany Newell's prose is too elegant to be called raw, but the oomph, the heart, makes everything feel so real. I love this world and this narrator, the risks she takes, the story she tells, simple yet so seductive and just teeming with aliveness.' - Michelle Tea

Praise for Oola:

'Newell nails the lure, intoxication, and fallout of obsessive love' Elle

'Stunning ... compelling ... the experience of reading Oola is one which will leave the reader pondering questions about love, desire, and possession long after the last page has been turned' NYLON

'Electrifying' Harper's Bazaar

'Oola is so good' New York Observer

'A dreamy and provocative exploration of sex, privilege, and self-discovery' Kirkus

'Her searching high beams on privilege's victims and beneficiaries, the fluidity of gender, the lonely writer's life, and love's desire to possess reflect Newell's obvious talent for observation and care with words' Booklist

Book Information
ISBN 9780008670399
Author Brittany Newell
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Weight(grams) 270g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 22mm