Featured in NY Times, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, A.V. Club, BuzzFeed, Oprah Daily
The Atmospherians
"This is exceptional writing."
-NY Times
A “dazzling” (Bryan Washington, author of Lot), brilliantly satirical debut novel for fans of Women Talking and Red Clocks about two best friends who form The Atmosphere, a cult designed to reform problematic men.
Sasha Marcus was once the epitome of contemporary success: an internet sensation, social media darling, and creator of a popular women’s wellness brand. But a confrontation with an online troll has taken a horrifying turn, and now she’s at rock bottom, fortressed in her apartment while men’s rights protestors rage outside. All that once glittered now condemns.
Sasha’s oldest childhood friend, Dyson—a failed actor with a history of body issues—hatches a plan for Sasha to restore her reputation by becoming the face of his new business venture, The Atmosphere: a rehabilitation community for men. Billed as a workshop for job training, it is actually a rigorous program designed to rid men of their toxic masculinity. Sasha reluctantly accepts, but what horrors await her as the resident female leader of a crew of washed up, desperate men? And what exactly does Dyson want?
Explosive and wickedly funny, this “Fight Club for the millennial generation” (Mat Johnson, author of Pym) peers straight into the dark heart of wellness and woke-ness, asking: what happens when we become addicted to the performance of ourselves?
Praise for The Atmospherians
"This is exceptional writing: McElroy’s world-building is artful, funny and bracingly resonant. . . . Whether we’re online or not, “The Atmospherians” includes all of us in its vast, cutting scope. The algorithm wouldn’t want it any other way."
—NY Times Book Review
"The Atmospherians is what happens when an amazing idea meets stunning awareness meets brilliant writing. A book dazzling with power."
—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black
“The novel balances perfectly on the razor’s edge between reality and absurdism, the place where excellent satire dwells, while spinning a complex investigation of huge topics: guilt, culpability, loyalty, sexism, fatphobia, abuse of power…. It is a book about craving—fame, food, praise, each other, ourselves—and it is a book to be devoured.”
—Vanity Fair
“A bold, mischievous, and brilliant debut novel. . . . [T]his is a novel you’ll mull over long after you’ve read the last sentence. You might even memorize its most biting quips."
—AV Club
"McElroy exposes the cognitive dissonance required to live in a world in which everything exists alongside everything else all at once, the world of the internet. It is a brilliant debut, marking McElroy as a writer to watch."
—The Seattle Times
"McElroy offers trenchant commentary on our society’s fraught gender dynamics."
—The Washington Post
“Gutsy, hilarious, and fully saturated with the absurd spirit of our times, The Atmospherians is a novel about the tangle of capitalism, narcissism, and masculinity that have defined our cultural moment. McElroy is a master excavator of the murky innards that drive us, a satirist with an eye for the tender parts that make us tick.”
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
“The Atmospherians is a marvel, a wonder, a gift. McElroy's characters glide across the page, in and out of love, and we see ourselves in their conflicts, their crucibles, and what they hold dear. Simply put, McElroy dazzles. This novel is dazzling.”
—Bryan Washington, author of Lot and Memorial
“Isle McElroy’s debut novel is wickedly funny, graceful in prose, and brilliant in execution. With its exploration and critique of contemporary culture in general, and masculinity gender performance specifically, The Atmospherians is a Fight Club for the Millennial Generation. I feel particularly bullish on this novel, and this writer.”
—Mat Johnson, author of Pym and Loving Day
"The Atmospherians is a thrilling satire about wrecked reputations and flawed stabs at redemption, but it’s also an earnest examination of the fragile place between community and mob; most disturbingly, Isle McElroy draws an accurate portrait of this agitated era."
—Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and The Answers
“What wicked, utterly sublime, laugh-out-loud satire. With deft, shimmering prose, boundless in its capacity for capturing our most visceral desires, McElroy deciphers our age of wokeness and all its seductive kinks. This dazzling novel is the world, and we are living inside it.”
—Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, author of House of Stone
"Isle McElroy has written the novel of our age. The Atmospherians combines Mary Gaitskill's unflinching examination of beauty, cruelty, and power with a toxic masculinity rehabilitation center so outlandishly funny that it would fit perfectly in an episode of Nathan for You. This is a voice to get very excited about: darkly perceptive, stylistically bold, and terrifically, inimitably entertaining."
—Mary South, author of You Will Never Be Forgotten
"An astonishing vision. Every page contains a new wonder, another breathtaking surprise. This novel satisfies a hunger you might have never even realized was there."
—Matthew Baker, author of Why Visit America
"McElroy's impressive debut novel lands a well-crafted jab at toxic masculinity and attempts to control it... rich prose and haunting images, using a finely honed satirical lens. This notable debut makes hay with the miasma of contemporary culture."
—Publishers Weekly, Summer Fiction Pick
"McElroy’s debut is as uncomfortable as it is thought-provoking. It takes on toxic masculinity, eating disorders, influencer culture, and the violence inherent in power dynamics without dragging or overreaching. Edgy, addictive, gruesome, and smart."
—Kirkus (Starred review)
"....sly and uncanny and darkly funny...."
—Poets and Writers