The Answer Is Always Yes

"Here is a brainy, heartfelt, continuously inventive novel on a theme we know very well from life and hardly at all from fiction: the wish to be cool. It’s impossible not to assent to The Answer is Always Yes."—Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision

"From the smoke and mirrors of the New York club scene emerges Magic Matt, the Jay Gatsby of his generation. This painfully unpopular young man’s fierce determination to reinvent himself as the hippest kid at NYU is, by turns, darkly comic and profoundly tragic. The Answer Is Always Yes is a stellar coming-of-age novel with a nifty, sinister postmodern twist. And it’s a terrific read; an eloquent page-turner. How’s that for some kind of wonderful?"—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment, and A Disturbance In One Place

"Fierce and wildly original—Monica Ferrell is a thrilling new voice."—Nick Flynn, author of Bullshit Night in Suck City

"Packed with poetry and humor, this dazzlingly written first novel unearths the sorrow behind that strange American sickness, the pursuit of cool. Like the city they eulogize, Ferrell’s sentences teem with beauty and ambition—you want to linger at every turn."—Eric Puchner, author of Music Through the Floor

“A pyrotechnic debut…. The protagonist and prose recall the Richard Fariña/Tom Robbins school of writing.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Exquisite…[Ferrell’s] exuberant narration evokes her likable protagonist’s world."—New Yorker

"Irresistibly readable, Ferrell’s first novel is a triumph not only of setting but also of voice, tone, and attitude…Gorgeously written, beautifully imagined, and wonderfully spot-on."—Booklist, starred review

"Ferrell is a good writer who understands hipster anxiety and the aspirations that New York manufactures with every generation."—Time Out

“A stylized and exuberantly written debut novel.” —Publishers Weekly