★ 04/11/2022
Hutson’s affecting and ingenious debut follows a woman’s attempt to find refuge from her tragic reality. Bonnie is known in her small town as the convenience store clerk who survived a vicious robbery in which she was sexually assaulted and the store’s owners murdered. Alone in her trailer, she develops an obsession with the 1970s sitcom Three’s Company , in which she finds a “surrogate family, impervious to death or harm.” After she wins a massive lottery payout, she buys a mountaintop property and recreates the show’s apartment complex. Hutson succeeds in describing Bonnie’s quasi-religious devotion to the pop culture artifact without resorting to pompousness. Rather, Hutson instills the enterprise with Bonnie’s sense of impending doom, which she expresses in self-aware narration: “Farce punishes everyone eventually.” The project unfolds in complete secrecy, the actors and crew required to sign NDAs, read Bonnie’s dry synopsis of the show, and watch an episode. (Readers will likely be put in mind of Tom McCarthy’s Remainder more than once.) Once the giant replica set is built, Bonnie plays the sitcom’s various characters in turn, though her isolated splendor is threatened when outsiders intrude onto the compound. This darkly clever work dramatizes the necessity and fragility of illusions, showing how they can crumble when broadcast to the world. Hutson is off to a brilliant start. (June)
"One of my favorite books of the year... [One's Company ] is wildly original, and clever, and stunningly sad. It’s an excellent look at trauma and loneliness and American culture and excess."
"All the Books" Podcast - Liberty Hardy
"Joyfully weird... Like many sitcoms, this novel balances lightness, humor and love with moments of darkness and even horror... Who among us has never longed to escape into a TV show, a movie, a written story, to live in it at least temporarily? One’s Company , delightfully odd and beautifully written, is a pleasure to read."
New York Times Book Review - Claire Kohda
"Like some uncanny hybrid of Tom McCarthy, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Mulholland Drive , Ashley Hutson’s high concept black comedy, One’s Company , packs deranged laughs against deep trauma in a no-holds-barred debut. Surreal, ambitious, and page-turning, the painful memory performance of Bonnie Lincoln’s wish to live forever in a sitcom might be more realistic than the realism we think we know."
"This novel hooked me from the very first line... Hutson’s prose is both simple and captivating, containing nuggets of wisdom that peek into the complexity of humanity."
"This book is such a savvy, deadpan, moving meditation-unto-absurdity on obsession and trauma and throwaway television and the ways that our hobbies can hurt us and heal us and sometimes overwhelm us. I absolutely loved it."
"[An] engaging debut… There's much to appreciate in Hutson's deft exploration of the toll trauma takes as well as both the lure and dangers of disappearing into a fantasy world."
"Ashley Hutson’s novel fearlessly takes on trauma, loneliness, madness, and desire in wholly unexpected ways. The dazzling imagination of the novel’s formidable protagonist, Bonnie Lincoln, is rivaled only by that of her brilliant creator: One’s Company is a totally original, bitterly funny, and emotionally complex tale about the power of fantasy to both save and destroy the things we cherish."
★ 2022-03-30Three’s Company wins the lottery and replicates the world of the sitcom to live in.
Bonnie Lincoln is a Three’s Company superfan: She’s got multiple copies of all 172 episodes of the beloved 1970s TV show as well as small items of memorabilia: T-shirts, tickets to tapings. She can’t afford much living in a trailer and working at Scheele’s Market, a mom-and-pop grocery owned by the family of her best friend, Krystal. But when Bonnie buys a ticket for a record-setting lottery and then emerges as the sole winner, she knows immediately what she’ll do with the money: buy an enormous parcel of land and set to work replicating every last detail, to the food in the cupboards, of the Three’s Company environment. No one, not even Krystal, knows all the details or the depth of Bonnie’s obsession: “Other people can ruin a dream,” Bonnie muses, “just by knowing it.” Hutson swings back and forth between the building of Bonnie’s obsessive and isolated fantasy and her life before, uncovering the forces in her past—first the death of her father by suicide, then the death of her mother a few years later, and finally a horrifying trauma suffered by both her and Krystal—that led Bonnie to turn so wholly away from the real world and into the sun-soaked nostalgia of a sitcom. Hutson is far too smart, though, to turn Bonnie into an easy case study on the effects of trauma; Bonnie is both self-aware and resolute that her turn away from the world is justified. Hutson’s prose, too, is as cleareyed and convincing as the novel’s premise is farcical. But, as Bonnie reminds us, “Farce punishes everyone eventually.”
Looks at trauma, wealth, and infatuation through a startlingly original lens.
★ 12/01/2022
Hutson's completely original debut opens with thirtysomething protagonist Bonnie Lincoln collecting the largest lottery jackpot in history and immediately searching for a remote property on which she will build an exact replica of the set of the zany 1970s—80s sitcom Three's Company . Once the apartment complex and all the other buildings (e.g., the flower shop where Janet worked; Jack's restaurant) are constructed and furnished, she'll live one year as each character, working her way through all episodes of the show from the perspective of every character. Although Hutson writes in the first person, Bonnie's complicated character, and the horrific traumas that pushed her toward this bizarre fantasy world, are divulged only gradually, thanks to Hutson's precise prose and brilliantly structured, nonlinear narrative. Narrator Rachel Jacobs's sympathetic depiction of Bonnie's obsession, mania, and vulnerabilities helps listeners truly connect with Bonnie, even as her unaddressed grief and trauma make her dangerous to herself and others. VERDICT Unlike episodes of her beloved sitcom, Bonnie's story is destined for an unhappy ending, one that may disappoint some listeners, but Hutson's clever novel also contains many exquisite moments of delight and tenderness, all warmly presented by Jacobs. Highly recommended for all literary fiction collections.—Beth Farrell
