A fictional validation of the phrase “more money than brains.”
In Wittenborn’s TV-ready novel, an Adirondack hunting club shelters a cabal of wealthy misogynists.
Growing up in the backwoods of Rangeley, New York, Evie Quimby, has been raised to trap, fish, and hunt—and to be resourceful and wary. Her adoptive parents are known as the town hippies. One night in 2001, when she's 17, Evie narrowly escapes being molested by a group of local slackers when Lulu Mannheim intervenes. Lulu owns Valhalla, a mansion on acres of pristine Sister Lakes property. The two women form an unlikely friendship, and Evie first sees Lulu’s attorney, Win Langley, as an avuncular, mentoring figure. But readers know, from an earlier chapter, that Win is a sociopath—apparently it’s his mother’s fault—who was groomed by Porter Moran, an older Wall Street investment banker who hires only handsome young men without scruples. Moran and Langley have recruited a number of other morally challenged males to join the exclusive Mohawk Club, whose lodge and acreage adjoins Lulu’s property. The group style themselves as the Lost Boys. Lulu’s fiance, Charlie, a Langley protégé, turns up dead, wearing Lulu’s wedding dress. Although she has every reason to suspect Langley in Charlie’s “suicide,” Evie, incredibly, trusts him. That trust is shattered when, under the guise of encouraging her nascent art-restoration career, Langley drugs and rapes her. But Langley, with his sexual proclivities, is an outlier—the Lost Boys’ main mission is financial, though the details of their shenanigans remain frustratingly opaque. Seventeen years later, Evie’s quest to find a bone-marrow donor for her cancer-stricken 14-year-old daughter Chloé precipitates dizzying complications. We’re soon in high-concept thriller territory with only glancing nods to subtext. Evie is a well-rounded, fully motivated character, but Lulu is a stereotypical good rich girl, and the Lost Boys are one-dimensional scoundrels.
A fictional validation of the phrase “more money than brains.”Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00581-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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