Driven by an exuberant, searching spirit, Jade Chang’s kaleidoscopic new novel is a deep examination of the ways we commodify belief, the power and precarity of fame, and the delicious terror of being truly seen. What a Time to Be Alive asks if we can look honestly at the world and still love it; the answer is a brilliant, resounding yes. 

NY Times: “Unexpected fame catapults our delightfully haphazard heroine into a world of Silicon Valley conferences and private seminars primarily aimed at wealthy white women. Chang skewers these wellness settings with humor and biting specificity. . . .Throughout, Chang raises poignant questions about how to be authentic in the internet age, and how much of yourself you’re willing to commodify. . . . What a time to be alive, sharing this human experience — and to be a reader.”

New Yorker: “Timely and touching.”

Boston Globe: “Lola Treasure Gold . . . may be the smartest character who has ever helmed a novel about internet influencers, and also the funniest. . . . Two other pleasures of this book: its vividly detailed, completely-sold-on-it portrait of the city of Los Angeles, and the crush-worthy love interest Chang creates for Lola. . . . [Lola is] part Pema Chödrön, part Charlotte Brontë, part Jia Tolentino, and utterly a woman of her time.”

LA Times: “[E]qual parts love letter to Los Angeles, narrative about being a first-generation Asian American, exploration of grief and love and a found-family novel. . . . [Chang’s] prose is infectiously funny, and her ability to satirize rich people paying silly amounts of money to be led to their souls has only sharpened.”

Kirkus Reviews: “Chang draws characters with quick mastery, and writes Lola as a mille-feuille of sophistication, delighted lust, and self-doubt. The dialogue snaps and sparks, and Chang dispenses observations about race, class, feminism, sex, and influencer and tech-founder culture with panache . . . Nails the emotional contradictions, absurdities, and cathartic surprises of modern life.”

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“Jade Chang, with deadly humor and immense talent, has written an absolute romp of a novel about our ever-stumbling quest for sublimity and grace. I laughed, I cringed, I held on tight. What a Time to Be Alive is a triumph.”
— Justin Torres (Blackouts, We the Animals)

"Lola Treasure Gold [is] a heroine so dazzling and bold and psychologically healthy that you will wind up rooting for her with your whole heart. I loved it."
— Rufi Thorpe (Margo’s Got Money Troubles)

"…part love song to Los Angeles, part ode to friendship, part meditation on grief—entirely witty and vibrantly alive."
— Rachel Khong (Real Americans)

“What a Time to be Alive is a sly, sexy work of art… This is a novel that you will devour, and share with your friends, and soon want to devour again.”
— Angela Flournoy (The Wilderness, The Turner House)

“Lola Treasure Gold, the irrepressible heroine of What a Time to Be Alive… becomes an accidental influencer, a lighting-rod guru, and a singular and hilarious guide through TED conferences, moon festivals, the underground LA music scene, online stans, hipster podcasts, debauched desert weekends, free love, familial love, and let’s not forget a rabbit named Aristotle. Jade Chang has created a wise and provocative heroine sure to get people talking.”
— Maria Semple (Go Gentle, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?)