Hotel Andromeda — Heidi Julavits

A whimsical yet dark exploration of rigged biology, femininity and guns, Hotel Andromeda revolves around the lives of five girls, each born on the same day to the same mother but different fathers. Regina, Lydia, Pamela, Dora and Danielle have been under constant surveillance since they were infants. They live alone in a hotel--but is it a hotel? The rooms are empty, the girls have daily appointments with a talk therapist and their mother, a champion marksman, seems to have forgotten all about them. As their boredom intensifies, so does their deviousness; their ideas about personality and identity are challenged by the oppressive predictability of their environment. Combining lurid, surreal photographs by Jenny Gage with Heidi Julavits' penchant for the giddily sinister, Hotel Andromeda provides a wicked meditation on girlhood, alienation and the perversions born from being watched in isolation.