Overview

‘Highly seductive … and fun as hell!’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE ‘A noirish thriller, a sex-work satire, a romance’ OBSERVER ‘Drew me in like a whirlpool’ NICOLA DINAN ‘For the generation whose life is an endless stream of dead-end Hinge dates’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE A hottest book of 2025 in Sunday Times Style, Dazed, AnOther and Stylist. Baby spends her days with her sweet, cross-dressing, drug-dealing ex-boyfriend, Dino, and every night dancing at Paradise Lost, a strip club where she transforms into whatever, or whoever, her clients want her to be. When Dino disappears suddenly, Baby plunges headfirst into San Francisco’s shady erotic underground of dive bars and sex dungeons to find him. In this mirror world, she encounters a surreal cast of characters: Simon, a recluse who pays her for increasingly bizarre favours; a suicide fetishist named Nobody; and Emeline, Paradise’s balletic new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear. With her grip on reality loosening, and the clock ticking, will Baby manage to find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first? ‘Vivid … Exhilarating … Soft Core is pacey and rich, full of verve, drama and detail’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW ‘A hugely enjoyable exploration of all the strange things people desire’ THE TIMES ‘Incredible … the best book I’ve read this year – romantic, dangerous and sexy. It made me cry’ STYLIST ‘A profound look at sex work and lives unusually lived’ DAZED

Full Product Details

9780008670382

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Soft Core: 'Soft Core is a beautiful fever dream, a slippery, captivating pleasure, a love story stuffed inside a wadded nylon stocking. It’s a novel that wants to get close to you. It wants to bite your neck; it’s the actual promise of a hickey. I can’t remember the last book I read that was even half as tender. I ate it up' Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth Praise for Oola: 'Newell nails the lure, intoxication, and fallout of obsessive love' Elle 'Stunning … compelling … the experience of reading Oola is one which will leave the reader pondering questions about love, desire, and possession long after the last page has been turned' NYLON 'Electrifying' Harper’s Bazaar 'Oola is so good' New York Observer 'A dreamy and provocative exploration of sex, privilege, and self-discovery' Kirkus 'Her searching high beams on privilege’s victims and beneficiaries, the fluidity of gender, the lonely writer’s life, and love’s desire to possess reflect Newell’s obvious talent for observation and care with words' Booklist 'A gloriously labyrinthine love story, packing major verve and form … The prose is satisfyingly rich and thick, and often left me thunderstruck. It strikes that perfect literary balance between articulacy and mystery. I can’t tell you how many sentences I re-read. It’s the kind of book you want to linger in and never leave; the kind of book that DOES things to you … Poetic, inspiring, just wow. Brittany Newell is truly one to watch! … In short: I adored it' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals

Author Information

Brittany Newell's debut novel Oola was published when she was 21 years old. Her work has been published in Granta, N+1, The New York Times; the first chapter of Soft Core was published as a short story called 'Baby' in N_1. In 2021, she was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission that enabled her to write Soft Core.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available