‘Los Angeles’ by Emma Cline

For the protagonist of this story, a young woman working at a chain clothing outlet in Los Angeles, opening a box of clothes: “all stuffed and flattened together in a cube without tags or prices, made their real worth suddenly clear – this was junk, all of it.” But although she sees through the illusion, that does not free her from the work of maintaining it. “Before they put the clothes on the racks, they had to steam them, trying to reanimate the sheen of value.” Everything in the world of this story is reducible to its exchange value: beauty can be used to entice customers, the aspirations of young actors pay the bills of their jaded older teachers, and the story leaps into motion when the protagonist discovers that even her used underwear can be sold: a younger, savvier colleague regularly sells hers to men on the internet and the perverts who come into the shop, so the protagonist decides – though decides is hardly a word that belongs in the world of this story – to try it too.

In the final scene, the protagonist climbs into a car with a man to whom she is selling her underwear and during their uncomfortable interaction, she remembers a previous, unpleasant incident that she endured by imagining it as a story: “something condensed and communicable.” Even the story form itself is subjected to the same economic logic as the clothes that arrive, flattened into a cube and ready for sale. In its terrifying final moment, she realises that he has locked the car and she can’t get out. Then the ironic, affectless screen behind which this sad life plays out is torn away, and its awful violence is laid bare.

First published in Granta in 2017 and collected in Daddy, Chatto & Windus, 2020. Available for Granta subscribers to read here

‘Los Angeles’ by Emma Cline

‘Los Angeles’ tells the story of Alice, a young woman who has moved to the city to follow her dream of becoming an actor. She spends her days working in a clothing store, taking acting classes and running on the beach, until one day a younger colleague tells her about a new way to make money – and perhaps reclaim a sense of control over her own life. I must have read this story hundreds of times – carefully examining the way Emma Cline builds heart-pounding tension, writes in spare, precise prose, and considers femininity as a source of currency and power.

First published in Granta’s Best Young American Novelists 2017, and available for subscribers to read here; collected in Daddy, Chatto & Windus, 2020

‘Los Angeles’ by Emma Cline

Alice has recently moved to Los Angeles and gets a job in flagship fashion store selling provocative clothing, that may, or may not be, American Apparel. She meets an older, ostensibly more confident woman named Oona who describes how she’s been selling her dirty underwear for money. In need of some extra cash herself and wanting to fit in with Oona’s crowd, Alice does the same. It works for a while and then things take a turn for the worst. Paralysed, Alice dissociates from the situation and thinks about how she will fictionalise the story when telling Oona the day after. Here, fiction is not the saviour it’s often portrayed as, it’s a trauma. This is a fable about the perils of turning too much of life into short stories.

First published in Granta 139: Best of Young American Novelists 3, Spring 2017, and available to subscribers to read here, and collected in Daddy, Chatto & Windus, 2020

‘Los Angeles’ by Emma Cline

‘Los Angeles’ is a tremendous portrayal of the exploitation and insecurities of young women. The protagonist is working in a clothing store in L.A where everything’s overpriced and the girls are hired on how they look, not their intellect or experience. Management picks too-tight clothes for her to wear, and all the models in the pictures around the store have a sort of starved nymphomaniac aesthetic. We see how the structures that exploit women can be fought against or leaned into (the protagonist ends up flogging her dirty knickers to men in car parks for cash) and how sex is used as a tool and a weapon to exploit us all as consumers.

First published in Granta 149: Best of Young American Novelists 3, April 2017 and available to read there for subscribers. Collected in Daddy, Random House/Chatto & Windus 2020