Astrid Sees All

A Novel

By: Natalie Standiford

Narrated by: Emily Tremaine

Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

This “vivid portrait of a seedy, edgy, artsy, and seething New York City that will never exist again” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times best-selling author) - the glittering, decadent downtown club scene of the 1980s - follows a smart, vulnerable young woman as she takes a deep dive into her dark side. Essential reading for fans of Sweetbitter, Fleabag, and books by Patti Smith.

New York, 1984: Twenty-two-year-old Phoebe Hayes is a young woman in search of excitement and adventure. But the recent death of her father has so devastated her that her mother wants her to remain home in Baltimore to recover. Phoebe wants to return to New York, not only to chase the glamorous life she so desperately craves but also to confront Ivan, the older man who wronged her.

With her best friend Carmen, she escapes to the East Village, disappearing into an underworld haunted by artists, It Girls, and lost souls trying to party their pain away. Carmen juggles her junkie-poet boyfriend and a sexy painter while, as Astrid the Star Girl, Phoebe tells fortunes in a nightclub and plots her revenge on Ivan. When the intoxicating brew of sex, drugs, and self-destruction leads Phoebe to betray her friend, Carmen disappears, and Phoebe begins an unstoppable descent into darkness.

“A new wave coming-of-age story, Astrid Sees All is a blast from the past” (Stewart O’Nan, author of The Speed Queen) about female friendship, sex, romance, and what it’s like to be a young woman searching for an identity.

©2021 Natalie Standiford. All rights reserved. “Avenue A” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF FRANK O’HARA by Frank O’Hara, ©1971 Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Critic reviews

"In a youthful timbre and hesitant tone, [Emily Tremaine] captures Phoebe's struggles with identity and self-reliance. Phoebe is deeply invested in her relationship with her friend, Carmen, whose social ease Phoebe aspires to. Most impressive is Tremaine's evocation of the novel's varied settings - Brown University, with its mostly privileged student population, and the East Village club scene, with its drug culture." (AudioFile Magazine)