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Smog
Author: Stephanie DanlerPage Count: UnknownPublication Date: Expected publication 2026 APL Flour is currently coating my favorite cardigan like a fresh snowfall. The youngest just demanded a dinosaur-shaped pancake at four in the afternoon while I am trying to focus on Stephanie Danler’s upcoming Smog. Remember when books used to have plots instead of just vibes set in Los Angeles? I certainly do. Back when I was reading cozy village mysteries where the worst thing that happened was a poisoned gooseberry tart—oh, and speaking of ruined desserts, why do contemporary culinary shows always feature chefs screaming at each other over tweezers instead of just teaching someone how to properly cream butter and sugar? It makes me want to throw my mixing bowl straight through the window. But we are here to talk about the 1990s, the Menendez brothers, and the Chateau Marmont. The Chateau Noir Aesthetic Danler gave us Sweetbitter, which tasted distinctly like crushed ice and cheap Pinot Grigio eaten in a walk-in cooler at three a.m. Now we get a prestige noir about media circus culture and Beverly Hills rot. Hugo Byrne sounds utterly exhausting. A sober journalist haunted by tragedy, checking into the Marmont to watch two wealthy boys on trial for patricide. Groundbreaking. Joan Didion already wrote this exact essay collection, but sure, let us fictionalize it through the lens of a glossy magazine writer who is far too repressed for his own good. And then there is Liv Ellis. A society wife with mysterious origins. Every time a synopsis mentions a woman with mysterious origins, I reach for a dusting cloth. Is she an orphan? Did she change her name? Give me a good old-fashioned librarian with a ginger cat who finds a body behind the parish hall any day of the week over these tragic-chic coastal elites. Yet I will be pre-ordering this. Obviously. Because Danler knows how to write a sentence that hurts. Familial Pathology as a Blood Sport The thematic architecture here rests entirely on the rot beneath the manicured hedges. Privilege as a cage. Wealth as an accelerant for violence. The family unit as a slaughterhouse disguised as a country club. It is heavy-handed. The synopsis practically hits you over the head with a sledgehammer about institutions that betray us. We get it. Rich people are miserable and their kids shoot them. Bring back cozy British villages where the murderer is just the local apothecary settling a minor grudge over a prize-winning marrow. No one is writing about generational trauma in Upper Slaughter. They are just drinking tea and solving poisonings. Still, I am hooked on the promise of 1990s Los Angeles smog. The atmosphere will undoubtedly suffocate us in the best possible way. The baby monitor just illuminated with terrifying activity.