Juliet, the Maniac by Juliet Escoria

"For fans of Ottessa Moshfegh, Juliet the Maniac is a worthy new entry in that pantheon of deconstruction ... Dazzling."—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

A cult-favorite stylist holds nothing back in this darkly funny, unromantic look at the underbelly of coming-of-age and its brutal trials…

Juliet is a typical teenage girl—a little beast.

Lingering just underneath Southern California’s sunny, sandy beach culture, one young woman struggles to survive herself as she hurtles through the mid 90’s and tries to make sense of her on-and-off relationship with recovery. 

Juliet knows she should be poised for success. She knows her honors English teacher shouldn’t be changing her grades from F's to C's out of pity, knows she shouldn’t be snorting coke and chain-smoking at the Palms, knows she shouldn’t be hallucinating shadowy, Joan-of-Arc-like messages from God. But there is something dark and violent inside of her fourteen-year-old heart that makes it impossible for Juliet to stop self-destructing. The two forced hospitalizations didn’t help her, neither did the outpatient facility for gay, depressed art kids—maybe Redwood Trails therapeutic boarding school will? 

Through her Didion-esque lens, Escoria captures the brutality of girlhood—its fleeting, toxic friendships, the monstrous ways anger transforms, and the constant feeling of being close to normal, but not normal at all.

"The scattering of mementos from the author’s life throughout the narrative—such as Escoria’s hospital bracelet, a get-well card, newspaper clippings on Redwood and letters to a future Juliet—help frame a frightening story within the gentle wisdom of her later self, one that has seen the other side and decided to stay." - Electric Literature