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Sally Franson
Verona native Sally Franson has not sold out — by her own definition — though the title of her debut novel indicates otherwise.
“If it ever became selling out, it would be when I stopped putting my whole self into it,” Franson says. “And I don’t see that happening because I gave it everything I had and I will do it again.” The Minneapolis-based author of A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out will read at 7 p.m. on July 9 at the public library in her hometown of Verona.
The former Isthmus writer graduated from Verona High School in 2002 before relocating to New York City to attend Barnard College. In 2005, during her senior year, she scored an unpaid internship — save a free Metrocard — fact-checking, pulling clothes for photo shoots and contributing articles to the Daily Candy, a now-defunct, then-pioneering style site and e-newsletter. After her formative years in tie-dye and Birkenstocks, she idolized the trendy chic female employees who gave her a quick lesson in professional dynamics from an office in SoHo.
A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out, Franson says, is a bildungswoman — a female take on the bildungsroman, a novel built around a young protagonist coming into his own. Released in April on the Dial Press Hardcover imprint, The Lady’s Guide is narrated by Minneapolis ad agency employee and condo dweller Casey Pendergast. The effusive 20-something is working in an office full of women as her relationship with her best friend from college, an unconfident and starving artist/author, seems to be nearing its final chapter.
Casey is smug, yet on guard, about her protégé relationship with the ad agency’s director, a woman reminiscent of Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Meanwhile, her secretary is plotting to steal Casey’s job. When Casey is tasked with convincing authors to contract communications — social media, web copy, etc. — for out-of-favor brands, she begins to question her own scruples. At the same time, she starts dating her first client.
“The book is about my understanding of office culture and mean-girl culture — women who are trading power with each other and looking for power, [some who] don’t have any power,” Franson says. She also wanted to feature bold characters who contrast with female protagonists in modern books, whom she noticed were often anxious and depressed.
“On TV, I was seeing all of these amazing characters come out — Broad City, Amy Poehler — these women being lewd, brash, kind of sloppy,” she says.
A Lady’s Guide is, in Franson’s words, “a total beach read” that’s also a product of “her own preoccupation with being an artist when you live in capitalism and what it means to make a living in this system.” The book’s quick turns of phrase, robust vocabulary and enviable repartee support a character who’s growing into her own skin. It takes off at a running pace and never slows, a cadence that will keep even screen junkies intrigued. While it shines with the gloss of Us Weekly, A Ladies’ Guide to Selling Out ingeniously integrates the wisdom of a self-help bestseller.
