You Have a New Memory

This probing debut collection from essayist Arata reflects on her relationship with the digital world and its distorting effects on reality. In “America Online,” Arata likens the corrupting influence of the internet to J.R.R. Tolkien’s One Ring, recounting how as a teenager, she used an instant messenger account named after a Lord of the Rings character to flirt with an acquaintance who developed feelings for the made-up avatar before cutting off contact after catching on to the ruse. “The Museum of Who I Want to Be for You” meditates on the inauthenticity of social media by describing Arata’s experiences at a rigidly choreographed “meme conference” at the headquarters of an unnamed app heavily implied to be Instagram. The standout “How to Do the Right Thing” ruminates on the nature of online relationships by discussing how social media put the unnamed narrator (the essay is written in second person) in touch with an amateur comedian who sexually assaulted her, even as it facilitated the narrator’s friendship with another woman he’d assaulted. Observations on the internet’s uncanniness are well trod, but Arata succeeds in making them feel fresh with memorable storytelling and sinewy prose (“The internet, like a plastic bag, is a container that is both disposable and forever, and when we use the internet we become disposable and forever too”). This will resonate with the chronically online. Agent: Marya Spece, Janklow & Nesbit. (July)