Mess

Marie Kondo meets The Real Housewives in this charming and perceptive story of a professional organizer to Hollywood’s elite who learns to find love and acceptance amid the messiness of life.To the world, Jane Brown, a Los-Angeles based professional organizer, is a model of composure and reticence. But inside, she’s fiercely judgmental and critical of herself and others. A lover of order and tidiness, she struggles to accept the world’s exasperating messiness of both her own clients—a superficial sphere of influencers and rich creatives—and her live-in boyfriend, who is becoming as aggravating as he is comforting.

"Mess is a wonderfully artful book: a funny, sharp-eyed, finely observed, and precise satire of Hollywood and all the things we collect and covet. It is also a generous and tender examination of how we make meaning out of our material—our everyday—lives, our mess. The connection between who we are and what we accumulate becomes a delicate and intimate story in Michael Chessler's witty debut." — Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward

"Mess is a romping, rollicking meditation on the meaning of life and the material objects we hold dear even as they hold us back. Equal parts self-reckoning, love story, and real estate tour, it pulls back the curtain on the lifestyles of the rich and disorganized, and had me laughing all the way through. This is a delightful debut from a writer who’s as emotionally wise as he is comically gifted." — Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion