My Friend Natalia–Virtual Book Talk with Laura Lindstedt and David Hackston

On April 10, join us for a book talk with Laura Linstedt and translator David Hackston on My Friend Natalia, the author’s U.S. debut, available from Liveright Publishing on March 23, 2021.

 My Friend Natalia is a linguistic sexual thriller centered on one woman’s potent affliction: Natalia cannot stop thinking about sex. The unnamed, ungendered therapist who narrates the novel has leapt at the chance to employ their most experimental methods — “Something flared within me,” the therapist notes. “And it wasn’t exclusively sympathy…? It was more like a sudden experience of harmony, wholly inappropriate given the circumstances” — combining philosophy and literature, repressed childhood memories and explicitly unrepressed erotic experiences, through sessions that quickly shed all inhibitions. But it is clear from the moment that Natalia steps into her new therapist’s office that she has motives beyond simply fixing her sex life; and as tension percolates, the therapist can’t shake the question: What does Natalia really want?