National Bestseller
Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
One of Powell’s Best Books of 2023
One of TIME’s Best Books of 2023
One of Vulture’s Best Books of 2023
“A masterpiece of misdirection.” —Geraldine Brooks
“Mobility is a truly gripping coming-of-age story about navigating a world of corporate greed that��s both laugh-out-loud funny and politically incisive.” —Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor
“Kiesling . . . has pulled off a rare feat: a deeply serious, deeply political novel that is, quite often, fun to read. It’s a coming-of-age story full of delicious detail, keen satire, and complex humanity.” —Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic
Bunny Glenn believes in climate change. But she also likes to get paid.
The year is 1998. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is a lonely American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s bemused eyes, we watch global interests flock to her temporary backyard for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hearing rumbles of the expansion of the American security state and the buildup to the War on Terror. We follow Bunny from adolescence to middle age—from Baku to Athens to Houston—as her own ambition and desire for comfort lead her to a career in the oil industry, eventually returning to the scene of her youth, where slippery figures from the past reappear in an era of political and climate breakdown.
Propulsive and thought-provoking, empathetic yet pointed, Mobility is a story about class, power, politics, and desire told through the life of one woman—her social milieu, her romances, her unarticulated wants. Through Bunny’s life choices, Lydia Kiesling masterfully explores American forms of complicity and inertia, moving between the local and the global, the personal and the political, and using fiction’s singular power to illuminate a life shaped by its context.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
One of Powell’s Best Books of 2023
One of TIME’s Best Books of 2023
One of Vulture’s Best Books of 2023
“A masterpiece of misdirection.” —Geraldine Brooks
“Mobility is a truly gripping coming-of-age story about navigating a world of corporate greed that��s both laugh-out-loud funny and politically incisive.” —Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor
“Kiesling . . . has pulled off a rare feat: a deeply serious, deeply political novel that is, quite often, fun to read. It’s a coming-of-age story full of delicious detail, keen satire, and complex humanity.” —Amy Weiss-Meyer, The Atlantic
Bunny Glenn believes in climate change. But she also likes to get paid.
The year is 1998. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is a lonely American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s bemused eyes, we watch global interests flock to her temporary backyard for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hearing rumbles of the expansion of the American security state and the buildup to the War on Terror. We follow Bunny from adolescence to middle age—from Baku to Athens to Houston—as her own ambition and desire for comfort lead her to a career in the oil industry, eventually returning to the scene of her youth, where slippery figures from the past reappear in an era of political and climate breakdown.
Propulsive and thought-provoking, empathetic yet pointed, Mobility is a story about class, power, politics, and desire told through the life of one woman—her social milieu, her romances, her unarticulated wants. Through Bunny’s life choices, Lydia Kiesling masterfully explores American forms of complicity and inertia, moving between the local and the global, the personal and the political, and using fiction’s singular power to illuminate a life shaped by its context.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"This is the story of a single American life, a frank (and often funny) look at one woman's becoming. But the accomplishment of Lydia Kiesling's second novel is untangling the forces - politics, sex, and corporate might - that dictate all of contemporary existence. Mobility is at once a tale of family life and an indictment of capitalism itself; a truly extraordinary book." - Rumaan Alam
"State Department brat Bunny Glenn, Mobility's hapless, sometimes feckless, protagonist, likes her lip gloss and her Louboutins, and isn't likely to let vaguely leftish views stand between her and her rise in the oil industry. But this sly bildungsroman has subterranean intent. A masterpiece of misdirection and a cautionary tale for our times." - Geraldine Brooks
"Utterly absorbing and revelatory about the small, personal parts we play in a world we cannot comprehend. Mobility is a meticulously built stage for Kiesling's perfectly drawn, wonderfully flawed characters to stumble across. I always see parts of myself in the pages of Kiesling's books - the lesser angels I'm eager to hide away - and I feel less alone because of it." - Diane Cook
"Mobility is that rare gem that has the power to transport its reader, page to page, moment to moment, while subtly building to a conclusion of cosmic profundity. One could compare the deft Kiesling to any great novelist of our time, but ultimately her exploration of complicity reminded me most of Hannah Arendt; here is a writer who sees the world so clearly that she cannot help expose us to ourselves. I put down the book feeling both grateful for this author's all-seeing honesty, and a little frightened of it." - Kerry Howley
"Ranging from Houston to Athens to Baku, and back again, from the mid-twentieth century to the near future, Mobility is an incisive and beautifully written coming of age story set against the backdrop of the global oil industry and the climate crisis it helped bring about. With humor, insight, and a keen eye for detail, Kiesling tells the story of a young woman finding her way in the world, while at the same time exposing the greed, desire, and seemingly innocuous individual choices that have brought us to the current state of global catastrophe." - Michael David Lukas
"Mobility is a beautifully written and stunningly smart novel. It's a deeply engrossing, politically astute tale of the intricacies and intimacies of our daily complicity with late capital, with the collective bargain we've all made to count calories and coins while the world burns." - Namwali Serpell
"State Department brat Bunny Glenn, Mobility's hapless, sometimes feckless, protagonist, likes her lip gloss and her Louboutins, and isn't likely to let vaguely leftish views stand between her and her rise in the oil industry. But this sly bildungsroman has subterranean intent. A masterpiece of misdirection and a cautionary tale for our times." - Geraldine Brooks
"Utterly absorbing and revelatory about the small, personal parts we play in a world we cannot comprehend. Mobility is a meticulously built stage for Kiesling's perfectly drawn, wonderfully flawed characters to stumble across. I always see parts of myself in the pages of Kiesling's books - the lesser angels I'm eager to hide away - and I feel less alone because of it." - Diane Cook
"Mobility is that rare gem that has the power to transport its reader, page to page, moment to moment, while subtly building to a conclusion of cosmic profundity. One could compare the deft Kiesling to any great novelist of our time, but ultimately her exploration of complicity reminded me most of Hannah Arendt; here is a writer who sees the world so clearly that she cannot help expose us to ourselves. I put down the book feeling both grateful for this author's all-seeing honesty, and a little frightened of it." - Kerry Howley
"Ranging from Houston to Athens to Baku, and back again, from the mid-twentieth century to the near future, Mobility is an incisive and beautifully written coming of age story set against the backdrop of the global oil industry and the climate crisis it helped bring about. With humor, insight, and a keen eye for detail, Kiesling tells the story of a young woman finding her way in the world, while at the same time exposing the greed, desire, and seemingly innocuous individual choices that have brought us to the current state of global catastrophe." - Michael David Lukas
"Mobility is a beautifully written and stunningly smart novel. It's a deeply engrossing, politically astute tale of the intricacies and intimacies of our daily complicity with late capital, with the collective bargain we've all made to count calories and coins while the world burns." - Namwali Serpell
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