Books by Liza Monroy
The Distractions - Available for Pre-Order
Mischa Osborn spends her days as a ProWatcher—keeping distracted people on task and lonely ones accompanied—from her Brooklyn Megabuilding, while eating PetriMeat Steax and working out with her favorite personal trainer, a straight-talking algorithm named Tory.
Her carefully constructed, isolated existence is suddenly upended by a chance realspace encounter with a HighlightReel celebrity, Nicolás Adán Luchano. On their first date, hiking in Kuulsuits and watching DroneBeez pollinate flowers, Mischa experiences a brief but intense realspace connection.
Mischa takes to relentlessly watching Nic onReel. As Mischa’s ReelWatching spirals into an all-consuming obsession, and even realspace stalking, Mischa takes increasingly desperate measures to be seen and valued, sucking others into her vortex of obsession until she completely loses control.
Meanwhile, someone is equally obsessed with Mischa, tracking her every move and perhaps even influencing her choices.
A tale of how technology enables obsession, envy, and unrelenting comparison, told through an eccentric cast of interconnected characters, The Distractions invites us to reflect on who we are watching, and why.
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ADVANCE PRAISE:
“Smart, unexpected, engrossing, and thought-provoking. I’m honestly in awe.”
— Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth, Pen Faulkner award-winner and Man Booker Prize finalist for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“It’s the rare novel that has made me see the world differently.”
— Elizabeth McKenzie, National Book Award longlisted author of The Portable Veblen and forthcoming The Dog of the North
“Philip K. Dick meets Bridget Jones’ Diary”
— Kristin Wilson, author of Others Milk
"Genius... this book has its own vocabulary but is also a hilarious and scathing commentary on our own moment, told with intelligence, curiosity, and a sense of humor."
— Malena Watrous, author of If You Follow Me
The Marriage Act
After her traditional engagement to her high school sweetheart falls apart, Liza Monroy faced the prospect of another devastating loss: the deportation of her best friend Emir. Desperate to stay in America, Emir tried every legal recourse to obtain a green card knowing that his return to the Middle East—where gay men are often beaten and sometimes killed—was too dangerous. So Liza proposes to Emir in efforts to keep him safe and by her side. After a fast wedding in Las Vegas, the couple faces new adventures and obstacles in both L.A. and New York City as they dodge the INS. Their relationship is compounded further by the fact that Liza’s mother works for the State Department preventing immigration fraud. Through it all, Liza and Emir must contend with professional ambition, adversity, and heartbreak and eventually learn the true lessons of companionship and devotion. This marriage that was not a marriage, in the end, really was.
The Marriage Act is a timely and topical look at the changing face of marriage in America and speaks to the emergent generation forming bonds outside of tradition—and sometimes even outside the law.
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THE YOU MAY KISS THE BRIDE MOMENT: THEIR FIRST KISS AND THEIR LAST, NOVEMBER 17, 2001
REVIEWS
“The Marriage Act is a gripping, cinematic page-turner that, as the best memoirs do, opens avenues to larger, zeitgeisty conversations. Here, immigration, civil rights, gender issues, and same-sex marriage are high-stakes backdrops of a deeply personal, affecting tale of love, friendship, and family.”
— Julia Scheeres, bestselling author of Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives
“Despite its breezy style, Monroy’s provocative memoir offers more emotional food for thought than can possibly be digested in one sitting. After only reading the introduction, one might wish to remain quiet for a few minutes and ponder her use of the phrase gender-neutral marriage. As such, this phraseology perfectly embodies Monroy’s intentional marriage to a gay man. Though fraught with one psychological or legal time bomb after another, the marriage worked, despite the unimaginable odds. The book is bright. It’s chatty. But Monroy manages to deliver a hefty emotional wallop.”
— Booklist, Starred Review
“A tender, true exploration of human relationships.
“This book is a blast — it’s a political act, a buddy story, a love story, and a family saga gone beautifully and tenderly wrong. Read it.”
— Anthony Swofford, New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead
Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon To Be On Fire
Q: What’s The Deal With Your Book With The Funny Title?
LM: On a trip to Seattle, I bought my then-toddler a board book I spotted in the gift shop of the Chihuly glass exhibit. It’s called Beautiful Oops, and there’s a quote from it that encompasses why I wrote Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon To Be On Fire (and pretty much my entire philosophy):
“Oops! When you think you have made a mistake, think of it as an opportunity to make something… beautiful!”
My goal had been to find lasting, beautiful love, but my love life til then consisted of one OOPS! after another. Out of the (sometimes literal) wreckage emerged many lessons, culminating in these essays, composed in the wake of my essay When Mom Is On The Scent And Right for the Modern Love column in the New York Times.
Shoes chronicles misadventures in the search for love, bound together under the watchful eye of my eccentric, single mother, a “profiler” for the U.S. State Department who claims to discern someone’s true nature simply by looking on Facebook. She uses her professional aptitude to try to weed out the “wrong” men in my life. But things take a strange turn in response to a piece of feedback I received about the article. A reader wrote in: “This mother has done an awful lot to tell her daughter about who’s wrong for her, but what has she really done to help her find one who’s right?” So my mother began taking an active role in trying to find me “the one” – she started a blog and sent me on dates. The results were enlightening and surprising, and led to some central dilemmas:
How do we go about finding love in our times? Is a personal ‘profiler’ any better than a digital one? Do our parents really know best? And what happens when, rather than trying to evade a controlling parent, you hand her the reins to your (love) life instead?
Some answers to these and more are found in Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon To Be On Fire. (So is the answer to the question of the odd title. Hint: it’s literal.) Find me via the contact form to send advice questions or have my mother “profile” anyone you’re dating or thinking of giving the opportunity to enter your heart-space. Here, we talk about all this on LA’s awesome NPR affiliate, KCRW.
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REVIEWS
"...it is interesting to watch Monroy learn her lessons, to stop romanticizing her partners or assigning them to neat boxes, to assert boundaries and rules, even if they get broken. When she finally gets her happy ending, it feels earned."
Mexican High
The daughter of an American diplomat, Mila has spent her childhood moving from country to country. When her mother is reassigned to Mexico City for Mila’s senior year of high school, Mila has no idea what to expect. Mexico seems to be a country with the ultimate freedoms: the wealthy students at her private international school — the sons and daughters of Mexico’s ruling class — party hard at exclusive clubs, dress in expensive clothing, and see more of their housekeepers than they do of their globe-trotting parents. But Mila has more in common with them than they know: her father, whose identity has been kept from her, is a high-ranking politician with whom Mila’s mother had a one-night stand in her hippie days. Now Mila is determined to discover who he is, whatever the cost may be.
Mexican High is a coming-of-age story about identity, belonging, and first love. In a setting rife with sex, drugs, and political corruption, it is also a revealing look at elite Mexican society and its freedoms, dangers, and excesses. Monroy’s flawless evocation of the brink of adulthood, in many ways mirrored by the turmoil of Mexico City itself, makes this a truly memorable debut.
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REVIEWS
“An all-around expert on romantic love, Liza Monroy delivers these lively, touching essays about love in the depersonalized time of tech. Spanning countries and dates – some more successful than others and all under the watchful eye of her mother, a profiler for the U.S. State Department – Monroy delivers an engaging chronicle for our times.”
— San Jose Mercury News