On paper, Emma Cline is the kind of girl I want to punch. Astylish waif with a successfulmiddle-part and piercing blue eyes. The owner of a near-monochromatic wardrobe that’s both simple and defiant inits simplicity. The recipient of a $2 million advance, at the age of 25, for her first book (and two to come),the end result of a bidding war between 12major publishers. The author of a debut novel whose film rights were snapped up by Scott Rudin before themanuscript even sold. Cline is living a charmed life, a romantic-comedy-set-in-Manhattan kind of life, an I-live-in-a-shed-for-the-novelty-of-it kind of life. I want to find her wherever she’s tapping away on her laptop at twee essays for vauntedliterary magazines and punch her right below that middle-part.

There’s only one problem with this plan—several, if you count the unlikelihoodof my finding her shed or her even still living in the shed, or my…