THE OTHER PROFILE

In a world where what people are selling is themselves, this novel asks whether there’s any self left.

At 26, Maia Gatti is treading water; she’s dropped out of her competitive master's degree program in Paris and is living in Milan with an older boyfriend while picking up shifts at the local bar. Her biggest pleasure is buying gummy crocodiles and eating just one handful before dousing the rest in dishwashing detergent. There is a heart underneath all her apathy; she’s drowning out her sister’s recent death with Law & Order reruns. Her life changes when she gets a job as an image consultant to a pretty 18-year-old influencer named Gloria Linares. Maia can't stand Gloria until she sees the sadness beneath the girl’s photo-ready exterior. As the two become intertwined, the boundaries between them start to fall away, and Gloria becomes the sun around which Maia turns. That is, until Gloria copies something that Maia can't bear to give away—her grief. An act of revenge severs the tie between the two and sets Gloria free from her manicured image. A cross between Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, this book shows what happens when an influencer is influenced—by someone with nothing left to lose.

Graziosi tackles the question of what, in the digital age, is really ours.