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A Novel
by Vanessa Lawrence
An electrifying, propulsive novel about the rise and fall of a controversial beauty mogul and the moral gray areas at the intersections of beauty, power, and ambition.
It's 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment.
From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look—cosmetics through a female gaze—all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max's story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency.
Told over nine intense days yet spanning a lifetime, Sheer is a gripping, incisive, and provocative tale of a complicated female vanguard's insatiable drive and the slippery ground between empowerment and abuse of power.
"Lawrence nails the beauty world and how its trends speak to so many layers of culture, which all makes for a vibrant and sharp read." —Booklist (starred review)
"Tightly plotted and full of insider detail, the novel shimmers with complicated truths about women, beauty, and betrayal." —Kirkus Reviews
"Engrossing...A well-crafted tale of a striver's fall from grace." —Publishers Weekly
"Vanessa Lawrence is a marvel. Biting, shocking, illuminating, and whip-smart, her sophomore novel, Sheer, exposes the brutality behind the beauty industry, as it gives us the confession of canceled makeup mogul Maxine Thomas. Maxine bares all, revealing the layered pressures of gender, sexuality, race, and class at play on a made-up face, all the while telling us a gorgeous and unforgettable story. Lawrence pulls it off perfectly: she shows the awful system behind the beautiful woman, then the woman at the heart of the system itself." —Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Bear and Disappearing Earth
"Incisive and absorbing, Sheer examines the opacity at the heart of capitalist systems, showing us the price of disclosure and ambition. Vanessa Lawrence gives us the indelible narrator Maxine Thomas, a beauty founder whose confessions reveal a dark side of inspiration. I could not turn the pages fast enough." —Carrie Sun, author of Private Equity
This information about Sheer was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Vanessa Lawrence is a writer, editor, and native New Yorker. Her debut novel, Ellipses, was named a best book of 2024 by Vogue and a most anticipated book of the year by ELLE, Electric Literature, and Autostraddle. For nearly two decades she covered the arts, fashion, beauty, design, and New York society as a staff writer for publications including Women's Wear Daily and W Magazine. She has a BA in history from Yale University and an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
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