In late 2007, the nation braces for the Great Recession, and Veronika DeMarco, a 29-year-old jewelry sales associate, is cast on the popular reality TV dating show Man or Million. Recently divorced and saddled with debt, Veronika believes the show’s enticing cash prize might just be her first step toward a new life. But after a drunken night on set, and a hazy hookup with the show’s male star, Veronika is unexpectedly and covertly sent home for “health reasons.”

Half a year later, back in her hometown, Veronika is trying to stay sober, rekindling a fling with a pyromaniacal ex, and hoping to forget that the show ever happened. But when it premieres on cable, Veronika doesn’t recognize the version of herself she sees on-screen and struggles to shake the nagging feeling that something happened that last night on set, something she should be able to remember. Meanwhile, a rotating cast of bystanders—the show’s creator, host, on-set psychologist, production handler, and a personal assistant—reckon with what they do and do not know about that night and how much they may be responsible for what happened. When Veronika is promised to be paid for one more televised appearance, she heads to Las Vegas in search of redemption, and the converging storylines come to a head at the show’s revelatory live reunion episode.

With stylish, incisive prose and psychological precision, Victoria Hulbert cuts through the artifice of reality TV, sensitively rendering real people, in all their terrible, wonderful complexity. Balancing critique and compassion, Screen Memory is a thought-provoking, compulsively entertaining debut novel exploring manufactured reality and manufactured consent, class dynamics, exploitation, and surveillance in a world that demands constant performance, especially from women.