I want to see the movie.

From the opening page of Molly Jong-Fast's first novel Normal Girl, the dialogue reads like script, the chapters play like scenes. Miranda Wolk, the protagonist, is likable even though she'd sell her mother for another hit of cocaine and is rude to her ex-boyfriend Brett, who's obviously still in love with her.

Miranda is a filthy rich, spoiled, junkie of a 19 year-old who lives on the upper east side of Manhattan and sits idly behind a desk at an art gallery because she's a "trust funder looking to have something at the bottom of her business card." As a human being she's often times despicable, yet she knows that about herself and isn't afraid to admit it which, in an odd way, makes her endearing.

The fact that readers actually like Miranda Wolk is a testament to Jong-Fast's writing skills. In a phone interview with JBooks.com, Jong-Fast said, "It's easy to make characters who are impoverished look sympathetic, but make a rich girl from the upper east side sympathetic--now that's a challenge."

Normal Girl has been compared to Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero, and though Jong-Fast said she enjoyed Easton Ellis' book, she considers the main character of his book "very slick. I felt it was my duty to make a character who was pathetic and not slick, but you like her anyway," Jong-Fast said.

As with most first novels, critics are acclaiming Normal Girl semi-autobiographical. Therefore, Jong-Fast's success in making Miranda "not slick" is double-edged.

Anyone with a healthy amount of narcissism will want to make herself look good," Jong-Fast said. "In order to make it honest and not self-serving, I had to constantly think to myself, 'no one's ever going to read this.'"

Jong-Fast, who is twenty-two, lives in the same upper east side building as her mother, and since she was a teenager has written candidly about her life--including unflattering topics such as her childhood eating disorder. Her refreshing honesty and privileged lifestyle in many ways mirror Miranda's.

A reader who is unfamiliar with Manhattan, Jong-Fast herself, or her mother Erica Jong (the proclaimed "Queen of Erotica" and author of countless books, including the feminist revolutionizing Fear of Flying), might question whether or not Normal Girl crosses the line between fiction and non-fiction. "True? What's that?" the author joked. "Does it even exist?"

Jong-Fast says she tries to separate herself from her book's criticism. "I try not to take press personally," she said. "There are two people--who they think you are and who you really are. I tell myself these are not my best friends writing about me."

One big difference between Miranda and Jong-Fast is that Miranda "hates herself and her religion because it created her," Jong-Fast said. The author, however, loves being Jewish. Though her family was "really bohemian" and her "Grandma didn't believe in organized religions," Jong-Fast says her own children will have a bar or bat mitzvah.

"I'll definitely become more religious when I have kids. I want them to grow up Jewish," she said. "Religious structure helps kids. All my friends who went to Hebrew school were better off."

One of the amazing things about being Jewish, Jong-Fast said, is that it's okay for her to "lash out at where I came from and not have it mean that I'm renouncing it. It can just be part of my rebellion."

"I live on the upper east side and love it," she said, to give an example. "But in my book the character lashes out against it. She's given enough space to do this. For a while I didn't know what my identity was," Jong-Fast said. But, "my cultural identity, being Jewish, is the most important thing to me."

Jong-Fast chain smokes and yawns loudly as she talks early on a Monday morning, but she is still incredibly sharp. It's hard to believe she's only twenty-two. Or that she's already working on her second novel. "It's larger in scope. Has more characters. Is more interesting to me--more plot driven," she said.

When asked about her writing routine, the author said she worked on Normal Girl for two years full-time and got into a rhythm: "The best part of writing is when you start having ideas and you have to rush home to write. It's fresh and exciting. It's like airplane time--you think, 'how was it possible that I was on the plane for that long?' You stop realizing."

"The worst part of writing," the author said, "is when you think you're done with a project and then your editor hands back comments suggesting eight hundred changes. Re-writing is what makes a book great, but it's the most boring part."

Jong-Fast says she often visualizes scenes before anything else and reads "Page Six," the inimitable gossip page of the New York Post for inspiration.

"I think of weird things," she said. "I'm really kind of a freak." Yet it's her "freakish" nature that energizes her books. The reader of Normal Girl grabs on to Miranda's suede boot-wearing heals and braces herself for a ride. From heroin injections in nightclub bathroom stalls, to drunken moments in various alleys, to detox in a Montana rehab clinic, Miranda tells it like she sees it:

"The morning felt more like oreo filler."

And, "Dosage has never been my forte."

And, one of my personal favorites: "Why don't you ask someone who eats?"

But even though the reader hears all of Miranda's retorts, there is still a yearning to see more clearly through Miranda's eyes. Perhaps this need to wade through the marijuana haze or slow the action down to obtain a closer look is the result of Jong-Fast's realistic fictionalization of a drug influenced lifestyle. It may also be the result of a muddled or under exploited plot. Throughout much of the novel the reader is privy to Miranda's witty and often learned quips, but rarely has a stake in the action.

Which could explain this reader's desire to see the book turned into a movie. "I wasn't thinking of writing for a movie," Jong-Fast said, "but we're negotiating now for a movie."

Miranda Wolk is honest about the thoughts we've all had during the most unflattering of circumstances; she speaks with her filter turned off. Coupled with her Nicole Kidman looks and lavish lifestyle, her personality will take up every inch of the big screen.

In the meantime, Normal Girl, the book, is enjoying brisk sales. "There's a bookstore in my building, and my book's number two on their list," Jong-Fast said. "I'm anxious to go into bookstores now because I'm afraid they'll think I'm checking."

If that kind of success is any indication, the movie should be a big hit. But one has to wonder, if Normal Girl does get made into a movie, will Molly Jong-Fast go see it?

Jodi Werner is editor of GenerationJ.com. A recent graduate of the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at Emerson College, Jodi has taught Expository Writing and currently works on a feature-length screenplay. She lives in Boston.