Likewise with the rest of the characters’ central conflicts: should personal relationships or idealistic pursuits take precedence? With California, Lepucki raises the question, and, over the course of its gripping pages, reveals her answer. This sentiment, while ostensibly specific to a post-apocalyptic society, is strangely resonant with the choices women today are faced with. When Frida’s pregnancy becomes known within the settlement she and Cal have joined - a clan openly supporting “containment” - she undulates between desiring a quiet family life and the approval of her ambitious community. The kicker that sets California apart from, say, Lord of the Flies, and the many stories it's spawned, is Lepucki’s astute insight into the complex, and often conflicting, emotions women attach to childbirth today. This stylistic choice would be more compelling if the story were told in the character’s voices, rather than Lepucki’s workshopped third-person narration (she’s an Iowa grad, and short, declarative sentences abound), but is nevertheless sufficient for carrying along her tense and thought-provoking plot. An Interview With Author Edan Lepucki on What It's Really Like to be a Writer By Jeanine Cameron Founder and co-director of Writing Workshops Los Angeles Edan Lepucki fittingly dreamt of becoming a writer from the moment she learned to read. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. Chapters are told from their alternating viewpoints as their relationship slowly ebbs. Edan Lepucki is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Edan Lepucki lives in Los Angeles, where she was born and raised.

As Cal and Frida join a small, new citizenry, they begin concealing details of their daily lives from one another, and their trust takes a hit for it. She instead turns a critical eye to interpersonal relationships. While Lepucki’s story has all of the conventions of a literary dystopian novel - stripping society of its norms, she exposes our detrimental underlying tendencies - she does more than examine how social groups form and disintegrate.

Edan lepucki