GOOD COMPANY

A middle-aged novelist revisits complicated relationships with men in her past and present.

Christensen’s late-breaking #MeToo novel revolves around a character named Julia Heimdahl, who shares many details of the author’s biography and career, as recounted in a previous memoir, Blue Plate Special (2013), and in a personal history on her website. Julia is appearing at a book festival at her alma mater in the Pacific Northwest to promote her latest, a memoir titled Don’t Let It Bring You Down: A Compendium of Complicated Relationships; excerpts from the memoir are interspersed throughout the novel. Julia is on a panel with memoirist and literary biographer Ellis Blackwell—picture real-life author Blake Bailey, whom he resembles. Over the course of the festival weekend, Blackwell attempts to bond with and even seduce Julia, hoping to get her on his side in advance of a troubling accusation he knows is about to break in the media. Julia does have some sympathy for social outlaws: While she’s now happily partnered with a musician 20 years her junior, she’s still smarting from the punitive reaction of her community in Brooklyn when she had an extramarital affair at the tail end of her crumbling marriage. The title of the novel refers to a compliment Julia had previously been proud to receive from men, but she becomes less enthralled with it as she begins to examine her own complicity in abusive relationships and the roots of her own internalized misogyny. Christensen’s adeptness at character development and psychological analysis shines as she depicts the complexities of Julia’s interactions with the frenemies and colleagues she runs into at the conference. She also candidly addresses the question posed at the panel, “What’s it like having a boyfriend who’s twenty years younger than you?” Many readers will find this topic as interesting as the riveted conference audience does—and we get more juicy details than they do.

An astute addition to a decade of discussions about consent and predation.