Friday Fiction: Jessica Knoll's "Helpless"

What happens if we pay attention to our darkest fantasies?

This week Ashley and I sit down with Jessica Knoll, author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women, to talk about Helpless, her newest novel and a sexy, uncomfortable, deeply intelligent erotic thriller. Jessica takes us from the lifeguard chair where she snuck pages of The Hours on rainy afternoons, to the Cosmopolitan offices that taught her to pull stories from the headlines, to the screenwriting professor whose stranger than fiction death became the opening of Helpless. We talk about why she named her daughter after a Final Girl, why she can't stand the do-gooder heroine, how motherhood has made her more private, and how her horny reading era led her to write the book she couldn't find on any shelf.

"That was the first time I realized that not only will wealthy people pay to live like they’re poor, but they’ll call it a vacation too.”

-excerpt from HELPLESS by Jessica Knoll

Connect with Jessica Knoll

@jessicaknollauthor

Books Referenced:

Helpless by Jessica Knoll

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath