About
Liska Jacobs is the author of two acclaimed novels, Catalina and The Worst Kind of Want both published by MCD | FSG. To quote a review in The Believer: "The Worst Kind of Want presents Jacobs at her best: thinking through the fraught ethical problems and pitfalls of desire... Jacobs is establishing herself as a novelist who can probe what it means to be both selfish and vulnerable, asking with bald-faced earnestness: What, in 2019, are adult women allowed to want—and at what cost?" Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions and The Hairpin among others. She has an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. In 2022 her third novel, The Pink Hotel, will be published by MCD/ FSG.
Featured Work
The Pink Hotel
Confined to an opulent Beverly Hills hotel during a raging wildfire, a young couple is caught in the escalating tension between the wealthy guests and the staff, in Liska Jacobs's blistering, dark social satire, The Pink Hotel.
Newlyweds Keith and Kit Collins can hardly believe their luck when the general manager of the iconic, opulent Pink Hotel invites them to come for a luxurious stay as a bid to hire Keith. Kit loves their small-town life, but Keith has always wanted more, and the glittering, lily-scented lobby makes him feel right at home.
Soon after their arrival, wildfires sweep through the surrounding mountains and Los Angeles becomes a pressure cooker, with riots breaking out across the city amid rolling blackouts. The Pink Hotel closes its doors to "outsiders," and Keith and Kit find themselves confined with an anxious, disgruntled staff and a growing roster of eccentric, ultra-wealthy, dangerously idle guests who flock to the hotel for sanctuary, company, and entertainment.
The Pink Hotel exposes a tenuous class system within its walls, full of insurmountable expectations and unspoken resentments, which deteriorate as the city burns. In her barbed, provocative new novel, Liska Jacobs explores the corrosive nature of greed and interrogates the notion of true love, while hurtling readers toward certain disaster.
