A âhilariousâĻhugely entertainingâ (Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City) novel that captures the complexities of marriage, art, friendship, and the fictions we create in order to become the people we wish to be.
A creative writing professor at a third-tier college in upstate New York is on his way home from a summer fellowship in France, where heâs spent the last three months loafing around Bordeaux, tasting the many varieties of French wine at his disposal, and doing just about anything but actually working on his long overdue novel. A stopover in Brooklyn to see his and his wifeâs closest friendsâJohn, a jaded poet-turned-lawyer with a dubious moral compass, and Sophie, a once-promising fiction writer with a complicated past and a mysterious allureâcauses further trouble when he and Sophie wind up sleeping together while John is out serenading Brooklyn coeds with poems instead of preparing legal briefs.
But instead of succumbing to his failures as a teacher, writer, and husband, an odd freedom begins to bubble up. Could a love affair be the answer heâs been searching for? Could it offer the escape he needs from the department chair, Chet Bland, whoâs been breathing down his neck? Relief from the gossip of colleagues and generational tension with students? Respite from embarrassment with his wife, Debra Crawford, and her meteoric rise as a novelist? His escapades might even make the perfect raw material for an absolutely devastating novel, which would earn him tenure, wealth, and celebrityâeverything he needs to be set for life. If only he could be the one to write it.
A brilliant case of art imitating life, Andrew Ewellâs âsharp, wittyâ (Richard Russo, author of Straight Man) debut is a poignant tour de force that asks who owns whose story, skewers the fictions created from our lives and othersâ, and brings a whole new meaning to the phrase âpublish or perish.â