David szalay books5/18/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() James exudes a boyish sweetness and eagerness, and Katherine's hesitation and unreadability have less to do with emotional remoteness or with being a belle dame sans merci than with her genuine grief and confusion about what happened to her marriage. She blows hot and cold, can be remote and enigmatic he can seem needy and sex-obsessed. ![]() Szalay vivisects the awkward, tentative relationship that develops between Katherine and James, a sporadic companionship-with-benefits that is shadowed and complicated by the possibility of a resumption of her marriage to Fraser. Katherine, manager of a luxury hotel, is estranged from her husband, Fraser, an aging paparazzo who strayed with an underwear model, was exiled and now-perhaps a bit too desperately and adoringly for her comfort-wants his wife back. James is a 30-something one-time dot-com megamillionaire now reduced to a meager middle-class existence with his dog, and reduced, too, to eking out a living via various iffy schemes, among them a shady business as a horse-racing tipster. The third novel (and American debut) by the Canadian-born Szalay, one of the Daily Telegraph's Best 20 British Novelists Under 40, is a somewhat cold but nuanced and bracingly intelligent dissection of contemporary London life. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |