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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt

PERFUME AND PAIN

Anna Dorn

Taking its title from an out-of-print lesbian pulp novel, PERFUME & PAIN is a campy nod to the lesbian anti-romance of the 1950s.

Twelve-steppers might call Astrid Dahl a love addict, but she's not a twelve-stepper, she's a romantic... To Astrid, love is the best drug and she's tried them all. The novel opens with Astrid meeting Ivy, the enigmatic PhD student in her lesbian Zoom writing group, Sapphic Scribes. Seducing Ivy quickly becomes Astrid's raison d'etre. A novelist, Astrid just sold the TV rights to her book for a lump sum and is focused exclusively on quitting the "magic cocktail" she calls The Patricia Highsmith, which she took throughout her 20s to thrive. But like all coping mechanisms, it turned on her - and started jeopardizing her wellbeing and career. Worse, Astrid's landlord makes her leave her perfect bungalow to one sharing a yard with an artist, Penelope. Penelope quickly becomes a problem. Astrid is private and Penelope is nosy. As Astrid obsesses over Ivy, ignoring all the red flags, Penelope becomes the bane of Astrid's existence, interfering with her cherished privacy. The red flags become banners, but Astrid uses her fiction brain to narrativize around them, until an unexpected love triangle develops.

PERFUME & PAIN is a novel about a woman escaping the historic trappings of lesbian melodrama, the suggestion that lesbian romance be doomed and crazy-making, to accept real intimacy as she enters into mid-life.

Anna Dorn is an author, editor, and writing teacher living in Los Angeles. She teaches writing classes at Write or Die and is an associate editor at Hobart Pulp. She was a Lambda Literary Fellow and her second novel EXALTED was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize.

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Book Published 2024-05-01 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Come to Perfume & Pain for the sexy drama, stay for the satire and hilarious doses of shade thrown at Hollywood. This novel is like driving down PCH listening to Lana Del Rey and vaping out the sunroof. Every moment feels sun- drenched, edgy, and unstoppable.

Acerbic, steamy, and compulsively readablefans of ribald, satirical humor (with a specific focus on celebrity melodrama and LGBTQ+ culture) will read it in one go. It's this author's best work yet. A Sapphic roller-coaster ride and pitch-perfect homage to lesbian pulp fiction.

Anna Dorn's Perfume & Pain is a wonder. Dorn masterfully takes on cancel culture, holier-than-thou writers groups, and the complex rules of lesbian dating. The result is a smart and sexy, laugh-out-loud funny page-turner.

Perfume & Pain combines the very best impulses of pulp fiction (dysfunction, drama, deception) with Anna's signature whip-smart, fearless style. Darkly funny and careening down every perverted, doomed spiral, this is the funniest novel of the year and Dorn's best yet. Light on its feet yet endlessly probing, Perfume & Pain is as sharp as it is delicious."

Perfume & Pain slaps so hard it stingsbut in the best way. Astrid, agent of lesbian chaos and love addict who's half-heartedly trying to change, is a magnetic main character, and I found myself relating to too many of her uncouth opinions. It was thoroughly enjoyable to follow Astrid's anticsI flipped pages fast and LOLed frequently. And I'll never again see the name Patricia Highsmith without thinking about Astrid's favorite drug cocktail that leads to her most entertaining bad behavior.

Blending over-the-top humor with poignant observations on relationships, Perfume & Pain finds that rare sweet spot between campiness and vulnerability

Dorn keeps her finger squarely on the pulse. This brash novel pushes the envelope in all the best ways.

A testament to Dorn's confidence as a writer. Her characters are fully developed and completely themselves, bold even in their neuroses.

Lurid and sensational. Perfume & Pain is deeply entertaining, hilarious, and smart. A compelling window into cancel culture, writing, and lesbianism. Anna Dorn never misses.