A thrillingly weird novel about art, obsession, and the feral nature of female creativity.

Sabine is a conceptual artist whose latest show, Fuck You, Help Me, is about to launch, when her world begins to unravel. Stalked by a mysterious figure whose approaches grow increasingly threatening, she spirals deeper into her neuroses as exhibition day approaches and her fear transforms into something primal and untamed. Accompanied by her strange alter egos — from hyper-realistic baby puppets to the ghost of performance artist Caroline Schneemann — Sabine hurtles toward a surreal climax that forces a reckoning with what it means to create, to be seen, and to survive as a woman artist in a voyeuristic world.

Ella Baxter delivers a blazing work that dissects creativity and obsession with visceral humour and unflinching intensity. Part psychological thriller, part artistic manifesto, Woo Woo is a strange and haunting feast that pulses with rage and crackles with dark energy — a literary firestorm unlike anything else.

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‘A hyper-focused character study of a working artist in the age of platform capitalism. It at once lampoons and indulges the quirks of the self-marketing creative … As both a satire of the contemporary art world and a sincere portrait of the “chronically online” artist, Woo Woo effectively captures the emergent energies of a generation accustomed to transgression and feminism, but still struggling to metabolise these terms when a living woman embodies them.’

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‘Ella Baxter cements herself as a novelist with a gift for exposing vulnerability under the surface of the absurd … [A] thoroughly bewildering exploration of exposure and autonomy, of seeing and being seen, through art and in life.’

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‘A captivating meditation on art, obsession, and the difficulties women face while creating their work … Discomfort and vulnerability permeate the tale, a smolderingly disturbing yet often hilarious chronicle of Sabine’s fantastical interior world, a mental landscape characterised by a near-hallucinogenic commitment to her work … The book shines as a satire on the relentless blurring of reality and artifice within the art world … [R]eaders who enjoy capital-A Art will likely be enthralled by Baxter’s careful dissection of an artist at work.’

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‘Bracing … Woo Woo is a sharp, scathing satire of the monstrousness of the contemporary art world — namely, its competitiveness, pretensions, and suffocating insularity. Baxter has an acerbic pen, aided by an ear for dialect — she wields both internet- and therapy-speak, not to mention the willfully opaque language of the art world, to great effect in skewering her target.’

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‘Sure-to-be strange, sure-to-be-gripping … A new form of art monster rises over the horizon.’

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‘At once a ridiculously funny satire on the art world and feminist rebuttal to bodies commodified in the name of creativity, Ella Baxter’s Woo Woo is a bizarre and astute reckoning with art itself.’

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‘Curiously refreshing … [Baxter is] a crafty writer.’