There is a long tradition of stories about artists that are also about the question of how to represent life in art; novels about artists with toxic female friendships are more unusual.
Enter Anika Jade Levy’s slim and sharp debut Flat Earth, which shares its title with a film made by a woman whom Avery, the narrator, identifies as her best friend. Frances is a rich and beautiful twentysomething who becomes a “reluctant celebrity in certain circles” after her film, “an experimental documentary about rural isolation and rightwing conspiracy theories” in the modern-day United States, premieres to critical acclaim at a gallery in New York. Avery, meanwhile, is struggling to write what she describes as “a book of cultural reports”.
