Review_FICTION
28 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 8, 2021
New Yorker editor Clare Sestanovich’s debut
collection, Objects of Desire, captures a keen
sense of longing (reviewed on this page).The Great Mistake
Jonathan Lee. Knopf, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-
0-525-65849-8
Lee (High Dive) dissects the life and
murder of Andrew Haswell Green, one of
New York City’s preeminent city fathers
and adversary of the corrupt Boss Tweed,
in this ambitious outing. In November
1903, at the age of 83, Green—a onetime
comptroller and architect of Central Park,
the Museum of Natural History, and the
Brooklyn Bridge—steps outside his Park
Avenue home and is shot dead by a man in
a bowler hat in broad daylight. To uncover
the motive, Lee moves backward and for-
ward in time. The detective assigned to
the case probes the entanglements of
wicked and wealthy bawd Bessie Davis
and unstable gunman Cornelius Williams,
who seems to have acted on private strug-
gles. In chapters devoted to Green’s past,
the reader learns of his father’s failing
Massachusetts farm, his apprenticeship in
Trinidad, and close friendship with New
York governor and future presidential
candidate Samuel Tilden, whose rise pre-
figures Green’s own pursuit to become “an
elegant man.” Lee’s two-tiered structure
falters slightly under the weight of Green’s
copious resume, but he sustains a capti-
vating strangeness in his depiction of the
period, such as the practice of hunting
stray dogs on city streets for a bounty. By
and by, a dynamic all-American character
emerges, making for an audacious histor-
ical. (June)Objects of Desire
Clare Sestanovich. Knopf, $24.95 (224p)
ISBN 978-0-593-31809-6
Sestanovich’s intelligent debut collec-
tion demonstrates a gift for pithy detail
that encapsulates the whole of a charac-
ter’s personality or era of lived experience.
In the title story, protagonist Leonora is
hung up on an ex: “They had exchanged
love letters and endured two or three
pregnancy scares. Once, they had been
accosted at knifepoint. They had gone tofunerals together. Most of all, they had
fought passionately.” In “Annunciation,”
the passive ennui of recent graduate Iris is
juxtaposed against the more definitive, if
slightly absurd, lives of others: her mar-
ried housemates are in a food-oriented
polyamorous relationship with another
couple; Iris’s best friend teaches her “to
eat burgers and bagels and bacon—there
was nothing as powerful as eating mascu-
line foods with feminine grace.” At times,
the observations and jokes give way to
poignant insights into the characters’
psyches: in “Wants and Needs,” Val, mis-
interpreting a facial expression, is “filled
with bitterness for all the faces that had
refused to reveal themselves to her.” The
collection finds cohesion around the quiet
angst of mostly young, female narrators
who long for experiences, other people,
and states of being just beyond their
grasp. These technically accomplished if
not quite revolutionary stories demon-
strate a high command of craft. Agent:
Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (June)The Vanishing Point
Elizabeth Brundage. Little, Brown, $28 (336p)
ISBN 978-0-316-43037-1
In this dark-toned mystery, Brundage
(All Things Cease to Appear) develops an
engrossing story about a love triangle
involving three photographers. As the
novel begins, famous photographer Rye
Adler has presumably died, thought to
have jumped off a bridge, though his body
hasn’t been recovered. His former art
school roommate Julian Ladd attends thefuneral and reflects on the days when the
two were “nearly feral with ambition.”
Rye’s photographs teemed with people,
whereas Julian’s urban landscapes were
eerily empty: “It’s not what’s there that
matters. It’s about everything that’s not.”
They both were drawn to their classmate
Magda Pasternak, who had an affair with
Rye before he achieved international suc-
cess. Twenty years later, Magda, now a
wedding photographer, contacts Rye to
help find her missing son, and after he
agrees, Rye goes missing. Meanwhile,
Julian deals with divorce proceedings. The
first half of the novel brilliantly dissects
the competitive and erotic entanglements
that mark the characters, and Brundage is
particularly good at using photographic
theory to describe how each sees the world.
Some of the nuance diminishes in the
second half, as the mystery about how
everyone is connected comes into focus
and the characters flatten out. Still, the
portrait has enough depth to hold the
reader’s gaze. Agent: Linda Chester, the
Linda Chester Literary Agency. (May)The Atmospherians
Alex McElroy. Atria, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-1-
982158-30-9
McElroy’s impressive debut novel
(after the chapbook Daddy Issues) lands a
well-crafted jab at toxic masculinity and
the culture’s attempts to control it. Sasha
Marcus, creator of a popular wellness
brand for women, is a social media sensa-
tion until her foul response to an internet
troll gets her cancelled. Suddenly unem-
ployed, at home, and with men’s rights
activists demonstrating outside her
apartment, Sasha is desperate. So when
her visionary if misguided childhood
friend, Dyson, reaches out with a proposal
to start a cult, Sasha agrees. Housed at an
abandoned property, the cult—named
The Atmosphere—has one mission: to
save white men from themselves. Dyson,
a failed actor with an eating disorder,
recruits the men under the false pretense
of job training. Operations begin with
men being forced to purge their food after
meals, followed by hard labor around the
property and therapy sessions with Sasha.
As the pressure builds and a job offer lin-
gers in Sasha’s voicemail, her friendship
with Dyson is tested. Things worsen when
The Atmosphere appears in the news, andFiction
Reviews
©^
ed
ward^fr
iedma
n