One's Company: A Novel

Review\n"Joyfully weird... Like many sitcoms, this novel balances lightness, humor and love with moments of darkness and even horror... Who among us has never longed to escape into a TV show, a movie, a written story, to live in it at least temporarily? One’s Company, delightfully odd and beautifully written, is a pleasure to read."
― Claire Kohda, New York Times Book Review\n"This novel hooked me from the very first line... Hutson’s prose is both simple and captivating, containing nuggets of wisdom that peek into the complexity of humanity."
― Farrah Penn, Buzzfeed\n"One of my favorite books of the year... [One's Company] is wildly original, and clever, and stunningly sad. It’s an excellent look at trauma and loneliness and American culture and excess."
― Liberty Hardy, "All the Books" Podcast\n"[An] affecting and ingenious debut... This darkly clever work dramatizes the necessity and fragility of illusions, showing how they can crumble when broadcast to the world. Hutson is off to a brilliant start."
― Publishers Weekly (starred review)\n"[Ashley] Hutson is far too smart...to turn Bonnie into an easy case study on the effects of trauma...Hutson’s prose, too, is as cleareyed and convincing as the novel’s premise is farcical...Looks at trauma, wealth, and infatuation through a startlingly original lens."
― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)\n"[An] engaging debut… There's much to appreciate in Hutson's deft exploration of the toll trauma takes as well as both the lure and dangers of disappearing into a fantasy world."
― Booklist\n"This book is such a savvy, deadpan, moving meditation-unto-absurdity on obsession and trauma and throwaway television and the ways that our hobbies can hurt us and heal us and sometimes overwhelm us. I absolutely loved it."
― Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You\n"Like some uncanny hybrid of Tom McCarthy, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Mulholland Drive, Ashley Hutson’s high concept black comedy, One’s Company, packs deranged laughs against deep trauma in a no-holds-barred debut. Surreal, ambitious, and page-turning, the painful memory performance of Bonnie Lincoln’s wish to live forever in a sitcom might be more realistic than the realism we think we know."
― Blake Butler, author of Alice Knott\n"Ashley Hutson’s novel fearlessly takes on trauma, loneliness, madness, and desire in wholly unexpected ways. The dazzling imagination of the novel’s formidable protagonist, Bonnie Lincoln, is rivaled only by that of her brilliant creator: One’s Company is a totally original, bitterly funny, and emotionally complex tale about the power of fantasy to both save and destroy the things we cherish."
― Maryse Meijer, author of The Seventh Mansion\nOne of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022 So Far and BuzzFeed's Must-Read Summer Books\nFor readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad, this fearless debut chronicles one woman’s escape into a world of obsessive imagination.
Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the ghosts of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three’s Company.
When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision―to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity―takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three’s Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.