October 15, 2021
A story within a story about chance encounters and the ways that they can alter lives forever. At John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, having just arrived from Los Angeles and waiting for a connection to Berlin, the unnamed narrator of Wilson's third novel recognizes a former classmate from UCLA standing at the ticket counter. The classmate, a man called Jeff Cook, invites the narrator to the first-class lounge to wait for their delayed connection. Over drinks, Jeff decides to tell the narrator a strange tale, beginning just after the two graduated from college years earlier. One morning, overlooking a beach in Santa Monica, Jeff catches sight of a drowning figure and rushes in to save the older male swimmer, giving him the titular rescue maneuver until the swimmer sputters back to life. Afterward, Jeff is haunted by the incident: Did the man live? Would he recognize Jeff if they met again? Jeff discovers the man's identity: He is Francis Arsenault, a wealthy art dealer, and he has, indeed, survived. But Jeff's questions multiply and turn to obsession. He begins taking steps to find out even more about Francis and, eventually, to worm his way ever deeper into Francis' life, to unsettling effect. Wilson's use of the frame here means the story barrels along on parallel tracks, creating a propulsive interest in the answer to two questions: What will happen as Jeff's life increasingly revolves around Francis? And why does Jeff seem equally obsessed with telling this story for the first time to an acquaintance he barely knows? Wilson wraps some big questions in this page-turner: Is destiny something that merely happens to us? Or can we manipulate it to great--or devious--ends? A deliciously nasty morality play in the guise of a thriller.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 18, 2021
Wilson (Panorama City) explores the intertwined fates of two inscrutable men in the Los Angeles art world of the early 2000s in this shifty work of psychological suspense. The unnamed narrator, a novelist delayed at the airport on his way to Berlin, runs into an old college acquaintance, Jeff Cook. Jeff invites the narrator to the first class lounge, where he tells him a long story. Twenty years earlier, while strolling along the beach, Jeff resuscitated a drowning stranger, Francis Arsenault, a successful art dealer who showed no interest in his savior. Jeff, by contrast, attempted to learn everything about Francis, and ingratiated his way into Francis’s gilded life—insisting to the narrator that his motives, though obscure even to himself, were not necessarily mercenary. Francis is a prickly figure, a “master manipulator” whose bullying and shady business practices caused the upright Jeff to belatedly question whether Francis was worth saving. Though the frame narrative can feel contrived, and Francis might not be as memorably monstrous as, say, Graham Greene’s Harry Lime, the extended scenes of self-fashioning and occluded vision make good use of Patricia Highsmith’s influence. There’s plenty of satisfaction in watching the characters navigate the blurred line between plausibility and truth.
October 15, 2021
On the beach, it didn't feel like he had a choice. Jeff sees the swimmer drifting in the water, with no one else nearby, and drags him out of the ocean. His chest compressions may break the man's ribs, but they revive him. After the lifeguards take over, Jeff feels deflated instead of elated by the event. As he tells the story to an old college acquaintance years later in a first-class airport lounge, Jeff became obsessed with learning more about the man he had saved. In this taut, twisty tale, Jeff's motivations and decisions are open to debate. He learns the man is a successful art dealer named Francis, and as Jeff insinuates himself into his world, he begins to question whether Francis' life was worth prolonging. Domineering to both his family and his employees, Francis has built his business on exploitation and deception. As Francis takes Jeff under his wing, readers will be kept in suspense until the final pages about whether Jeff will ultimately embrace or reject his role as Francis' savior. Thought-provoking psychological fiction.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.