Bottle Train
A Novel
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Pub Date Jun 1 2027 | Archive Date Jul 2 2027
Henry Holt & Company | Henry Holt and Co.
Description
A contemporary retelling of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth with the high-octane energy of Bright Lights, Big City about a fashion model striving to secure her place within an elite society
In 2010 New York City, runway model and former it girl Lila Gao is trying to cash in on her beauty before time and money run out. Her father’s sudden death has sent her reeling, and her once-enviable career has stalled. As one of the few biracial Asian American fashion models, Lila’s made a living off her unique appearance since the age of sixteen, but this kind of currency won’t last forever.
In order to make rent, Lila needs to stage a comeback, so she reemerges onto the VIP nightlife scene where her magnetic old flame works as a club promoter. Together they get entangled with a wealthy social climber who’s determined to insert herself into their exclusive circle, no matter the cost. As New York Fashion Week approaches, Lila lands the opportunity to walk in a major designer’s show, while reluctantly entertaining prospective suitors as her backup plan. But when a lavish night out spirals out of control, Lila is reminded that her coveted world can’t exist without someone’s downfall.
With the darkly glamorous, cutthroat world of high fashion and downtown nightlife transposed onto the grand scale of a new American Gilded Age, Bottle Train is an opulent cracked mirror held up to New York’s postrecession years of decadence, excess, and inequality.
Advance Praise
“In Bottle Train, Kyle Lucia Wu aims a very large talent at a very small but fascinating subculture. I didn’t find a single false note in this fascinating recreation of the New York nightlife/fashion scene of the late aughts. Lila Gao reminds me of Lily Bart, a woman victimized by her beauty and ultimately rejected by the world to which she aspires. Wu’s grasp of subtle class and social distinctions is strangely reminiscent of Wharton’s. Like The House of Mirth, this is an ultimately tragic tale of a glittering demimonde.”
—Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights Big City and See You on the Other Side
“The fizz of champagne, thrum of bass, a thousand darting strobes—such is the underworld of Bottle Train’s 2010 Manhattan. Kyle Lucia Wu brings incisive commentary to the myth of the American dream with equal parts ecstasy and cautionary horror; this lurid page-turner captures the charismatic blaze of Gatsby without missing a beat on the coldblooded fetishization of femininity in New York’s post-recession club scene. Every word is fluorescent; afterward, you can’t unhear the buzz. Kyle Lucia Wu is a prodigious star; Bottle Train, a revelation of our time, of any time. You’ll burn through this novel.”
—T Kira Māhealani Madden, author of Whidbey and Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
“Bottle Train is part love letter to New York City nightlife, part sharp social commentary, like Edith Wharton meets The Best of Everything. In glittering prose, Kyle Lucia Wu perfectly captures the way an uproarious night out feels, lifting the velvet rope to reveal the opulence and the carnage required to achieve it. Come for the party, stay for the poignant interrogation of the ways we splinter ourselves for survival.”
—Katie Yee, author of Maggie: or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
“Like a champagne sparkler flaring to life in a dark room, Bottle Train is utterly captivating and intensely seductive from beginning to end. Kyle Lucia Wu gives us the VIP access of our nightmares, exposing a bygone world of New York City’s most exclusive nightclubs and the promoters, models, and moguls clawing for capital inside them. In their acts of desperation, we see it all: the weight of family legacy, the fragility of power, and the corrupting allure of wealth and beauty. I relished every moment in the pulsing labyrinth of Bottle Train.”
—Jenny Xie, author of Holding Pattern
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781250469557 |
| PRICE | $29.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 336 |