Pop Song

A Paperback Paris Most Anticipated Book
A Buzzfeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of the Year
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year
A Write or Die Tribe Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Pham reinvents the memoir in a stirring debut that explores the power of language, art, and love . . . This is a masterpiece." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

"Pham brings intellectual power, sensuousness, and psychological astuteness to her encounters with art . . . A thrillingly frank and incisive self-portrait." —Booklist

"The essays in this tender book balance artistic, academic engagement with personal narrative . . . This book offers a warm and expansive portrait of a woman’s mind that feels at once singular and universal." —Annie Diamond, BuzzFeed


"A tender heartache of a book, this memoir will make you feel seen in all the right ways." —K.W. Colyard, Bustle

"A stunning, vulnerable memoir-in-essays . . . a nuanced story about the nonlinear process of overcoming heartbreak and letting go." —Lydia Wang, BUST 

"In a manner reminiscent of contemporaries Leslie Jamison and Jia Tolentino, Pham seamlessly blends the personal and the cultural, the confessional and the critical, the cerebral and the sentimental, to create an exciting and imaginative memoir. A vital playlist that hits all the right notes; readers will reach the end ready to hit repeat." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[Pop Song] tweezes from pop-culture ephemera—transcendent pieces of art from James Turrell's light sculptures to Frank Ocean’s album Blond—to draw connections to distance and intimacy in travel, love, and loss . . . A smart book.” —Thrillist

“Back in the good old days before everyone had a newsletter, I used to follow Larissa Pham on TinyLetter, where she wrote—first for Nerve, and then for herself — incredible and intimate essays about sex and suffering and being alive . . . What excites me even more about [Pop Song] is the promise of more of Pham’s penetrating observations . . . I can’t wait to gobble up her writing in one, nearly 300-page-long whole.” —Jeva Lange, The Week

“I would follow Larissa Pham’s mind anywhere, and Pop Song takes me everywhere I didn’t realize I was longing to go: inside an aching exploration of the intangibility of the sky, to the suffocating boundaries of a crush that is violent in its capture, to art criticism from which a blazing self-portrait emerges. I am absolutely in love. You will be, too.” —Kristen Radtke

“Generous, insightful, and piercingly honest, Larissa Pham’s writing evokes a luminous and intricate closeness, the intimacy of an old friend or a new lover. Pop Song brings new light to the hidden contours of the heart, revealing new mystery and complexity right beneath life’s glossy surface.” —Alexandra Kleeman 

“Larissa Pham sketches a roadmap to transcendence, in essays that are as intimate as their subjects—bruises and breakups, blogging and trauma, hagiographies and low-light portraits of sleeping men. Beneath it all are the questions of how art and beauty are sourced in vulnerability, and how understanding is entwined with pain. Pop Song shows us that the personal essay isn't dead, it just fled the country with a new lover in the middle of the night.” —Tony Tulathimutte

“Artist and lit world phenom Larissa Pham’s debut essay collection is like a literary mixtape, which makes its title all the more apt. In her pieces about travel, sex, loss, and inner work, Pham builds a magpie-like nest out of cultural references . . . a volume that feels comfortingly worn-in and relatably restless.” —Keely Weiss, Harper’s Bazaar 

“There are a few different ways to experience transcendence in this life, and, in her debut book, Larissa Pham explores them all, from love to sex to art, never afraid to get up close and personal with the sublime. Pham's memoir-in-essays follows her as she finds escape in things and people and places; becomes obsessed, infatuated, in love; and figures out that her intense feelings surrounding books and albums and people were all related to her own journey toward accepting herself as being just as worthy of love—just as transcendent—as all of the many beautiful, wondrous things around her.” —Kristin Iversen, Refinery29, One of the Best New Books of the Year


"This book is crushing, cathartic, and utterly enchanting. It’s one of those books that finds us unexpectedly at our deepest end, as if in waiting. Pham possesses a gravity that is entirely her own, pulling you into her orbit and into the arms of someone who knows what it’s like to be sundered by this world . . . [Pop Song] marks the advent of a merciful, miraculous writer." —Paris Close, Paperback Paris

"Larissa Pham combines the thrilling and agonized travails of her young narrator with the lucid and steady eye of a born critic. The combination is a compelling portrait of one artist's development through the mirrors of her (and many of my) favorite artists. Pop Song is a bold and promising debut." —Melissa Febos 

“Larissa Pham is a fresh, energetic voice with a brilliant mind to power it. There are so many times in my past when reading Pop Song could have saved my life. It may very well save yours.” —Esmé Wang, New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias