"Dear Dickhead, I read the piece you posted on insta. You're like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past." Rebecca Latté is a famous actress, though perhaps past the peak of her career. Oscar Jayack is a middle-aged, moderately successful author who has been virally accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist, the feminist blogger Zoé Katana. When Oscar insults Rebecca's appearance on Instagram, she sends a scorching reply, and the pair fall into a spiral of mutual antipathy.
In back-and-forth emails, they vie for the last word, finding a hint of common ground in their experiences of addiction. But as Covid locks down Paris and the world starts to change around them, they reluctantly begin to lean on one another. A novel of rage, irreverence and vulnerability, exploring ageing, gender, privilege, addiction and consent, Dear Dickhead is an excoriating encapsulation of our times and of the broken human beings trying to make sense of them.