Sympathy — Olivia Sudjic

An electrifying debut novel of obsessive love, family secrets, and the dangers of living our lives online

At twenty-three, Alice Hare leaves England for New York. She becomes fixated on Mizuko Himura, a Japanese writer living in New York, whose life story has strange parallels to her own and who she believes is her “Internet twin.” What seems to Mizuko like a chance encounter with Alice is anything but -- after all, in the age of connectivity, nothing is coincidence. Their subsequent relationship is doomed from the outset, exposing a tangle of lies and sexual encounters as three families across the globe collide, and the most ancient of questions -- where do we come from? -- is answered just by searching online.

In its heady evocation of everything from Haruki Murakami to Patricia Highsmith to Edith Wharton, Sympathy is utterly original -- a thrilling tale of obsession, doubling, blood ties, and our tormented efforts to connect in the digital age.