Adam is in a slump: Once a successful bad-boy author (think Bret Easton Ellis), he floundered when the tides turned against his brand of misogynistic fiction. Adam now teaches at a Los Angeles college, but he may not get tenure due to a scandal; after accusing him of sexual misconduct, his student, Mandy, commits suicide. Adding to his stress, Adam\u2019s wife, Neve, wants a baby, but he doesn\u2019t. When a black envelope arrives in his faculty mailbox containing an invitation to a Greek island to work on his next novel, he accepts. On a yacht, Adam meets five other men bound for the same destination. Will is a lifestyle influencer, helping men \u201cget made, get paid, and get laid.\u201d There\u2019s a wealth manager, Camillio, and a formerly popular guru, Hari Rajneesh. Maxim is a conspiracy theorist, and River is an itinerant musician. The men discover their destination has caves in the hills resembling a honeycomb and is ruled by a queen. The area\u2019s largely populated by attractive women (\u201cbelles and barbies and big bad bitches\u201d); Adam is apprehensive, recalling the Agatha Christie mystery And Then There Were None. Hovannisian has composed an intriguing work of meta-fiction about an author writing about writing a novel\u2014a form of literature described by her own character Adam as \u201ccontemptible.\u201d The author\u2019s characters reveal other surprising dimensions: gentle River, who rescues a bee that\u2019s stuck in honey, reveals a dark secret; Neve alternates between being manipulative, sweet, and self-pitying; Adam, an unreliable narrator, keeps readers in doubt about what truth is. (He claims to have cared about and been kind to Mandy, but he also believes he\u2019s embattled by a hostile environment, a \u201cculture of castration.\u201d) Like Adam, LA is ambiguously portrayed; it\u2019s both radiant yet seedy, with a beautiful sky \u201clike a robe of purple and gold,\u201d yet it\u2019s a place where \u201cthere is nothing to distract you from the smog of your own soul.\u201d The protagonist\u2019s worldview may be toxic to many, but satisfying twists await readers able to make it through.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adam is in a slump: Once a successful bad-boy author (think Bret Easton Ellis), he floundered when the tides turned against his brand of misogynistic fiction. Adam now teaches at a Los Angeles college, but he may not get tenure due to a scandal; after accusing him of sexual misconduct, his student, Mandy, commits suicide. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}