SHEER

A cosmetic mogul’s carefully concealed sexual identity threatens the foundations of her brilliant entrepreneurial business.

Maxine Thomas has always understood two things about herself: She’s a wizard with lipstick and powder, and she’s attracted to women—both of which threatened her controlling, fashion-obsessed mother, who once said about a lesbian couple in a restaurant, “Filth like that shouldn’t be allowed in here.” No wonder Max faces deep despair in light of a career-ending scandal as the book opens in 2015; this is a thought-provoking and fast-paced story about a world of artifice that conceals a world of hurt. Max peels the layers back slowly, from her preteen expertise with drugstore compacts, on to her college-era list of socialite clients, interwoven with chapters about her present predicament as founder of a bestselling cosmetics line meant to enhance “who a woman really was—in her best light.” Even if society at large has grown comfortable with same-sex relationships, Max’s high-gloss sector prefers to draw a veil over them. As she negotiates bigger and bigger deals, she backs her personal life and deepest needs into a tiny corner of a psychological closet, and the author carefully ensures that that’s where the most destructive bomb goes off for Max, a double whammy of private pleasure and public humiliation that results from a naive early business decision. Unlike many novels about glamorous pursuits, this one doesn’t indulge in long paeans to luxury; each scene describing Max’s expertise or negotiations has a thematic purpose, driving forward industry misogyny, homophobia, and desperate attempts to fill an early void.

Tightly plotted and full of insider detail, the novel shimmers with complicated truths about women, beauty, and betrayal.