MUTUAL INTEREST

In turn-of-the-century Manhattan, a businessman enters into a lavender marriage with an ambitious woman and falls in love with his eccentric business rival.

On Fifth Avenue, a gambling party brings together three characters. Vivian Lesperance knows she’s in the last throes of romance with her lover, Sofia, a wealthy singer; she’s left behind her spiteful parents in Utica, New York, and worked her way into the fringes of Manhattan high society through her clever tenacity, but she’s running out of time to hitch herself to a new wagon. Forty-three-year-old Oscar Schmidt is a transplant from Ohio who manages the New York office of a soap company. Both his career and his personal reputation are on the verge of disaster—the former due to an upstart candle manufacturer competing for resources; the latter due to the gossip columnists’ assessment of him as a “horticultural gent” (to wit: a pansy). Finally, there is the rival in question, old-money Squire Clancey, a gentle “crackpot” (modern readers will clock him as likely on the autism spectrum), whose hyperfixation on candles and excessive wealth lead to his inadvertent competition with Oscar. Vivian sees at once that merging the two businesses could create a lucrative partnership; she also realizes that marrying Oscar could protect them both from the weight of their secrets. What follows is Squire, Vivian, and Oscar’s attempt to create a business—and a life—outside of traditional expectations. Wolfgang-Smith approaches historical fiction as a costume ball, affecting a fizzy, omniscient narration: At the book’s most fun, it’s Edith Wharton or Henry James, with more camp and a winking tone. But strict verisimilitude to this period in fiction also means a reliance on exposition, and combined with lots of business talk, this can slow things down.

All’s queer in love and industry: a memorable tale uniquely told.