The following is excerpted from Jen Silverman's debut novel, We Play Ourselves
, about a young writer who flees to the West Coast, where she is drawn into the morally ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects. Silverman is the author of the story collection The Island Dwellers
, which was longlisted for a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. Her plays have been produced across the U.S. and internationally, and she also writes for television and film.
My first week in L.A. is long and strange—simultaneously a repeat of certain basic activities (wake up, make coffee, drink it on the patio, check email, shower in the light-filled downstairs bathroom) and a barrage of smells and shapes that I have no context for. Fruit trees so overburdened with fruit that the sidewalks are littered with it; big squashy-blossomed shrubs; armor-plated cacti; homeless encampments comprised of dust-encrusted outdoor tents, shopping carts piled high with garbage bags.