Astrid Dahl is a mess. The protagonist of “Perfume & Pain,” the latest novel from Anna Dorn, is a self-obsessed L.A. novelist trying to rebuild her life after an ill-advised quip gets her canceled. In what is, essentially, a comedy of 21st-century manners, Dahl has to grow up if she wants to reclaim her career and perhaps find love in the process.

“I started writing this novel around the time that I turned 35, which is a big theme of the novel. Astrid, the main character, is 35 and grappling with what that means,” L.A.-based Dorn says on a recent phone call. “That was directly stolen from my own life, just turning 35 and realizing that a lot of my bad behavior was not really cute anymore and had probably stopped being cute awhile ago. But it hit me at 35.”

For Astrid, growing up also means staying away from the cocktail she calls “The Patricia Highsmith” — alcohol, sativa, Adderall and cigarettes — which is named for the author of novels like “Strangers on a Train,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “The Price of Salt.” Both Dorn and her protagonist are influenced by Highsmith, but there’s another reason behind the name of the cocktail.

“Patricia Highsmith was this very successful writer who was a complete mess in her personal life,” says Dorn. “She was an alcoholic. She was misanthropic and hostile and she had a really messy romantic life.”

The cocktail, and Astrid’s dependency on it, comes to represent how out-of-control her life is, even when she has attained professional success.

Ultimately, “Perfume & Pain” is a story about transitioning from being a young adult into a full-blown grown-up, which comes into play with a tug-of-war with Astrid’s two love interests.

“Ivy is the younger love interest and the more chaotic and dangerous one. She represents Astrid staying on this dangerous, wild path,” says Dorn. “So of course, she’s more tantalizing to Astrid in the beginning, because she says that she wants to change, but she really doesn’t.”

Then there’s Penelope, Astrid’s older neighbor. Says Dorn, “As the book progresses, she becomes more drawn towards Penelope, the older, more mature love interest, who represents Astrid growing up and becoming an adult.”

Dorn wrote the bulk of “Perfume & Pain” in 2021 and was influenced by the notion of cancel culture. “I was trying to write these books with irreverent characters and I was a bit worried about my ability to do my job in a climate where people had to be extremely careful with their words,” she says.

In some respects, the novel grapples with the ways in which personalities shift on and offline as Astrid falls for young, academic Ivy, who is harboring a secret on Tumblr, and develops a professional relationship with Kat, a movie star who has crafted a hip, intellectual online presence.

“I was very online, unfortunately. I’m definitely way too online. I can admit that,” says Dorn.

She adds that it’s “almost impossible” to avoid online life in her stories.

“I’m 37, so I was 12 when my family got AOL and I started going on to chat rooms, so it was really very much a part of my development,” she adds. “I grew up online. It’s not something that I can totally avoid.”

Dorn adds that she has used X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to connect with other writers and workshop her ideas. “I think I used Twitter to figure out what … is resonating with people and what my audience really has no interest in hearing from me, which is really useful,” she says. “It can be really humbling in that way.”

Still, Dorn adds, there are drawbacks to social media. “It does connect people in this unprecedented way, which is really nice, but there’s also a flattening of empathy,” she says.

“It is our instinct when we meet people in person to want to get along with them and see them in a more positive light,” Dorn adds. “The internet has this complete flattening of that, so it’s much easier to be critical and cancel people. I think that Astrid deals with a lot of that. She participates in it and she’s on the receiving end of it.”

Throughout “Perfume & Pain,” readers will certainly question both Astrid’s behavior and the responses to her actions. As the story unfolds, Dorn highlights how complicated people are and how simple they appear to be online.

“I’ve also been that mean person online, so I get it. It’s very easy to be mean online. It’s almost too easy,” she says. But Dorn adds, it’s also easier to show kindness to people online, for example, by reaching out to someone with a compliment.

“I think it’s easier to be nicer and meaner online,” she says.