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Book Reviewed by:
Jillian Bell
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A searing debut novel about a striving finance student, the line between ambition and greed, and the disordered politics of our era.
Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a better life by pursuing a career in high finance. But by the spring of 2016, Alistair's plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him, he's mired in student debt, and in his desperation he's gone to work for an enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than Alistair could have imagined. By the time Alistair uncovers his employer's secret, his life is in danger and he's forced to go on the run.
Meanwhile, Alistair's paramours, an older couple named Mark and Elijah, must face their own moral and financial dilemmas. Mark, nearing the end of his trust fund, takes a job with his father's mobile-home empire that forces him to confront the unsavory foundations of his family's wealth, while Elijah, a failed painter, throws in his lot with an artist-provocateur whose latest project transforms the country's political chaos into a thing of alluring, amoral beauty. As the nation hurtles toward a breaking point, Alistair, Mark, and Elijah must band together to save one another and themselves.
Propulsive, exuberant, and profoundly observed, Ways and Means is an indelible, clear-eyed investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in twenty-first century America.
Sentimental Education
Most days Alistair got up at six and stayed up until midnight. He read textbook chapters his professors assumed no one would read. He did the nonrequired supplemental problem sets they put on CourseWorks. He highlighted and underlined and highlighted and underlined. He emailed his professors with follow-up questions and news links pertaining to class discussions. He was only mildly deterred by the fact that they only emailed him back half the time. When his brain needed a rest he went to the gym, where with archaeological fervor he uncovered the lineaments of his pecs, his biceps, his triceps, his abs. He also kept up with his Economist, his Wall Street Journal, his New York Times Business Day. He followed the first stirrings of the 2014 midterms. He called his mother.
"Weather says a strong change of bloodshed next year," Maura said, referring to the elections. "Red upon red upon red."
Alistair offered a commiserating sigh. His mother had been hammering the ...
The push and pull between Mark, Elijah and Alistair is part of what makes this book so fascinating. Free spirit Elijah, with a penchant for pushing back against his and Mark's bourgeois lifestyle, is the one who initially suggests inviting a third person into their bed. But it is straight-laced Mark who falls the hardest for Alistair, feeling that in their desire for respectability they are on some level kindred spirits. Elijah can sense Mark's passion for their new lover, which only drives the longtime partners further apart. Alistair's presence uncovers and deepens pre-existing tensions between Mark and Elijah. Ways and Means is not a satire, but it is quietly witty, especially in the dialogue. With its cast of morally gray but profoundly likable characters, this book skewers the worlds of finance and high-profile contemporary art while addressing themes of generational trauma and redemption...continued
Full Review
(818 words)
(Reviewed by Jillian Bell).
Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictures Presents and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Deadly serious in ambition, wildly entertaining in execution, Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut that charts the fault lines of class, politics, art, and desire during a period of American crisis. Every line of this gorgeous novel glows with Daniel Lefferts' intelligence and compassion. Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends
A work of enormous wit, humor, and passion that captures life in turbo capitalist America with compassion and graceRecent research suggests about 4-5% of Americans are currently in relationships that break the convention of monogamy. While there is some fluidity to the terms used for different types of non-monogamy, an open relationship often refers to a couple being romantically and emotionally, but not sexually, monogamous, while polyamory often refers to the practice or option of having multiple relationships of a sexual and romantic nature. The common factor in all consensually non-monogamous relationships is that, by definition, everyone involved in the arrangement is aware of and consents to the terms of it.
With the visibility of non-monogamous relationships on the rise, we're also seeing more of them in the literary world. In Ways and ...
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