A slow paced (but exquisitely written and perversely engaging) novel rich in insightful discourse and doubly rich in character depth. At the core is a trio of best friends: Mara, Jen, and Claire — single New Yorkers operating at various edges of the wealthy. Claire — a high school guidance counselor and beauty queen; Mara a tutor for prep school students; and Jen the brainy former journalist and culture editor. It’s billed as a double novel — part one is Mara’s story, launched immediately after Claire’s sudden and violent death; part two is Jen’s story, taken up a year later and continuing with the evolving relationships, secrets, and healing.
I loved this book for the very real and thoroughly explored lives in relation to the catastrophic experience and the mad swirl of collateral damage resulting. New friendships, new discoveries, new reactions, new regrets, new hopes. The plot progresses, sometimes in very surprising (but utterly believable) ways. Social commentary throughout in characters’ thoughts, reactions, and evolving sense of self. Plenty of existential considerations as well as political discussions and a sense of societal duty (rather than entitlement). I found so many great quotes. I liked the fact that each character worked hard at understanding what made a “good person” and how they could best achieve that label, while also having the awareness of the layers of hypocrisy that lurk just below the surface. I also liked how well the author painted people from the different perspectives of the other characters through the kind of dialog / discussions we all have.
Quintessentially a New York story, and yet, typical for stories about New Yorkers, the characters are all NY transplants and so we travel from a Jain community in California, to the woods in Maine, to elite boarding schools, to high priced, drug infused Wall Street lofts in discovery of backstories. We consider white collar crime, dementia without financial resources, and the search for meaningful occupation. And we are surprised with a creeping, surreptitious solution to a mystery we didn’t know existed. We “join” in the discussion of a wide variety of topics from multiple perspectives on everything from climate change to the pros and cons of capitalism, to the real meaning of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (that was a hoot). Millet’s books have a kind of dream like quality for me because I feel like I am occupying so many different heads at once. I loved this book.
Quotes:
“We had our daily routines, inside millions of others, and along the edges of those routines there was always the prospect of the story taking new turns. Because the city contained multitudes. So if the story changed, we’d figured, maybe we’d be excited all over again. Even the pandemic hadn’t driven us away. We’d survived.”
“In more neutral terms, she explained, they were both aware that pleasure and so-called ‘being in love’ are based on neurological novelty. And that the brain can’t be trusted not to take a relationship for granted. If they hung out together for too long a stretch, the dopamine surges would flare out.”
“If I tried to join in, throwing out a quick word of agreement or question, they’d gaze at me anthropologically. Like they were tolerating my naive opinion the way you’d tolerate a well-meaning foreigner who doesn’t speak the language.”
“Still, if you took away words, music lasted for centuries, I thought. A distillation of sadness that never aged. Unlike the person who’d felt it.”
“‘Economically underprivileged,’ was what the school called them, but Claire said poor kids; economically underprivileged was a privileged euphemism.”
“Although, she’d added, they outsourced their misery. Norway, for instance, claimed to be leading on carbon-neutrality but got most of its money from exporting a s***load of fossil fuels. Plus they went around slaughtering whales. Like the Japanese.”
“I never wanted kids. Even back when being gay meant you probably couldn’t have them. For the middle and upper classes, it’s a way of replacing anxiety about society with a fixation on the domestic. So you don’t have to strain your compassion by worrying about anything beyond the home front. Because you’ve already met your daily quota struggling to raise your young You can give up your ideals and your unresolved tension over the existential crisis of the ongoing death of the planet. And be praised for it. Since breeding’s sanctioned as the highest form of love.”
“There’s no such thing as a gift horse, Mara. Richard’s a regular horse. And the deal with horses is, you have to take care of them. You have to feed them. Muck out their stalls, Clean the first and shit from their hooves with a rasp. And ride them on a regular basis.”
“I don’t have a heart at peace, with my ex-wife. With that woman, I have a heart at war.”
“Plus Richard bloviated more if another professional was present. Especially Eli, who he saw as highly intelligent and yet, as a forensic pathologist, not fully conversant with current readings of late-stage capitalism. Richard would shift into enthusiastic lecture mode while Eli, likely exhausted from eight hours poking around in gnarly corpses, nodded politely and endured. I had to break into the lectures to save him.”
“So what did I do, again? With all that was given to me? And the answer would be, I ate. Mara claims social boredom makes me act out. But I don’t act out enough. If I did, I wouldn’t get so bored.”
Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on October 6th, 2026.
Books to look forward to ... 