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Book Reviewed by:
Michael Kaler
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A shocking crime triggers a media firestorm for a controversial talk show host in this provocative novel - a story of redemption, a nostalgic portrait of New York City, and a searing indictment of our culture of spectacle.
Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery - both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie's past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.
In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man's downfall through the perspectives of two spectators - Cel, Mattie's skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past.
With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention - and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.
Prologue
Semi
1969
For years, this is how we remembered the man who would be Mattie M: walking through Greenwich Village, hands shoved into pockets, leaving a contrail of energy in his wake. He was Matthew Miller then—Counselor M. Miller, Esq. to the courts; Mattias Milgrom to his parents. Matthew to a very, very few. They say he had the charisma of a Kennedy, and not without reason—though he didn't have the face of one, and doesn't now; he only appears mild and unshockable and impossible to rouse to fury, if you didn't know better. He had an inelegant, raccoonish walk he later unlearned for the cameras. But he also radiated a subtle electricity—something slight and untraceable that kinectified the air around him—and it was easy to mistake this, then, for the particular dynamism of compassion. Because compassion took work, he always said, and anyone who told you otherwise wasn't really trying to be good at it.
This quality, whatever it was, is entirely ...
Spanning four decades and taking on a host of topical issues, from gun violence to the coarsening of public discourse, Jennifer duBois' latest novel The Spectators charts the rise and fall of an enigmatic politician-turned-talk-show-host. Broad in scope, the novel explores a seminal era in LGBTQ+ history with insight and intelligence—a sensitive portrayal of the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic...continued
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(Reviewed by Michael Kaler).
Deb Olin Unferth, author of Wait Till You See Me Dance
Every page is so brilliant, and every character so irreverent, that you'll hardly realize what you have in your hands is a passionate love story unfolding against the backdrop of a lost world. As you weave among ghosts, the witticisms turn into laments, then prayers, and through it all the writing is so damn good. Karan Mahajan, author of the National Book Award finalist The Association of Small Bombs
The Spectators is yet another triumph in an impressive oeuvre: a brave and painfully vivid excavation of the AIDS crisis in New York that, with its fine prose, breathes life back into an era of death. Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove
This contemporary tragedy, shot through with comic energy and a quiet, radical hope, has arrived at precisely the right moment. Dubois is a brilliant writer, and I could read her sentences forever. Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of Night at the Fiestas
Another breathtaking novel from one of our most brilliant writers ... The Spectators is a tense and propulsive exploration of how easily we can let our best intentions slip away. As secrets are uncovered, Jennifer duBois reminds us that to truly see, without apology or artifice, is itself an act of compassion. This novel pulses with intelligence and heart. Mandy Berman, author of Perennials
The Spectators is Jennifer duBois's ambitious and assured novel that strives to answer the question: What tragedies deserve to be told? Each sentence is more beautiful than the next, every line of dialogue sharper and funnier. I savored it all. Mary Helen Specht, author of Migratory Animals
A masterpiece, The Spectators is a thrilling high-wire act. Combining a symphonic structure with unflinching psychological insight, this gorgeous novel explores the ways in which we betray and redeem one another' - how we tell each other's stories and, in doing so, discover our own. Jennifer duBois is one of this generation's singular talents. Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
Jennifer duBois is a wonderful writer - funny and humane, generous and wise - and her newest novel, The Spectators, is a searing and moving examination of our culture's obsession with celebrity and the public persona. With penetrating wit and psychological acuity, duBois has created one of the most complicated and memorable characters I've read in years... A brilliant and propulsive book' - I loved it. Xhenet Aliu, author ofBrass
The Spectators is a jarring reminder of a not-long-ago paradigm in which we could be shocked and shamed by daytime talk shows and mass shootings, when America still put its collective cultural faith in art and entertainment at the seeming genesis of it all: New York City. Only a writer with the easy, exquisite intellect of Jennifer duBois could render the slow debasement of individuals and the groups they comprise with such authenticity and compassion, and make the experience of reading it all such a pleasure. I was awed and humbled by every page.
Jennifer duBois' The Spectators is centered around the fallout after a mass shooting at a school, an incident that was rare in the 1990s when the novel takes place, but has become seemingly ubiquitous over the past two decades (See School Shootings & Conspiracy Theories for statistics). Each of these shootings is accompanied by a public outcry, yet no meaningful gun control legislation has been passed. In the past two years, however, anti-gun protests have begun to reach a fever pitch.
A slew of signs suggest that the public increasingly favors stricter gun laws. According to a survey Pew Research Center conducted late last year, almost six in ten Americans believe that the nation's gun laws are too lax. A Navigator report also found ...
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