Wayne, author of six previous novels, returns with an ingenious dissection of marriage, masculinity, and privilege, propelled by a gimlet-eyed wit. The opening scene\u2014a Manhattan fundraiser where tuxedoed men \u201clike inflatable penguins\u201d mingle over wagyu sliders with their \u201cspectral, hollow-cheeked wives\u201d\u2014establishes both the novel\u2019s milieu and the lopsided dynamic between Steven, a 45-year-old writer living off a long-ago bestseller, and his high-powered wife, Lucy, who bankrolls their life. His mortification is complete when he accidentally streams a phone notification to his writing class in which his wife confirms she\u2019s paid his monthly stipend. Wayne excels at these micro-humiliations, exposing the psychic toll of dependency and artistic drift. But he also has fun sending up contemporary pieties, such as a school production of Hansel and Gretel retooled into a \u201cgenerative dialogue\u201d about loneliness. Instead of pushing the witch into the oven, Gretel asks her why she is \u201cnot practicing kindness.\u201d After the sudden death of the family\u2019s nanny, the novel\u2019s tempo shifts into something more sinister and unnerving. Steven persuades his wife to recruit a young Norwegian au pair, Astrid, who exerts a Mary Poppins\u2013like charm on the children, sidelining Lucy\u2019s position in the household. Meanwhile, Steven\u2019s creative paralysis gives way to an erotic fixation that Astrid reciprocates despite their 21-year age gap. Wayne is alert to cliche but complicates it by making Astrid less fantasy than catalyst, drawing out a buried childhood narrative that revives Steven\u2019s writing even as it scrambles his judgment. The novel\u2019s back half pivots into a thriller, culminating in a death and a trial that transforms private disgrace into public spectacle. If the resolution seems fanciful, it also sharpens Wayne\u2019s point: In a culture hungry for confession, even failure can be repackaged as art. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wayne, author of six previous novels, returns with an ingenious dissection of marriage, masculinity, and privilege, propelled by a gimlet-eyed wit. The opening scene\u2014a Manhattan fundraiser where tuxedoed men \u201clike inflatable penguins\u201d mingle over wagyu sliders with their \u201cspectral, hollow-cheeked wives\u201d\u2014establishes both the novel\u2019s milieu and the lopsided dynamic between Steven, a 45-year-old writer living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6696","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\/6696"}],"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=6696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}