Review by Booklist Review
Newly graduated from Harvard as a folklore and mythology major, Simon returns to his Jewish family's Coney Island apartment, where they watch coverage of the June 19, 1953, execution of convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in horror. Simon's migraine-assaulted mother knew Ethel when they were girls. With the intervention of his well-connected uncle, Simon is hired by a posh publishing house, where he is thrown into a moral quagmire when the intimidating publisher makes him editor of an atrocious potboiler loosely based on the Rosenberg case, The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic. How can Simon betray his family and his values by inflicting this travesty on the world? How can he risk his fledgling career? He certainly can't resist the flamboyantly seductive young author. Prose (Mister Monkey, 2016) ingeniously takes on publishing, the fallout of WWII, and McCarthyism in a gloriously astute, skewering, and hilarious bildungsroman. One of this bravura performance's many piquant delights is Prose's clever use of Simon's fluency in ancient sagas as he struggles to comprehend just how malignant the scheme he's bogged down in truly is. Mordant, incisive, and tenderhearted, Prose presents an intricately realized tale of a treacherous, democracy-threatening time of lies, demagoguery, and prejudice that is as wildly exhilarating as the Cyclone, Simon's beloved Coney Island roller coaster.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Prose (Mister Monkey) holds up a mirror to a fractured culture in this dazzling take on America's tendency to persecute, then lionize, its most subversive figures. In 1953, recent Harvard graduate Simon Putnam watches news of the Rosenberg execution on television with his parents in Brooklyn. Though Simon has profited from a Puritan-sounding name--and hopes to profit further--he's from a liberal Jewish family; his mother attended the same high school as Ethel Rosenberg (and even keeps a small shrine to her in their apartment). It's the height of the Red Scare, when "anyone could be accused" and "everyone was afraid." Flash forward a year, and Simon's literary critic uncle has landed him a job as junior editor at a prestigious but financially unstable publisher. When its founder, Warren Landry, gives Simon his first novel to edit, Simon is aghast to learn the project is a thinly veiled bodice ripper about the Rosenberg trial. It's an unusual book for the publisher, but Landry, a WWII veteran who once ran psyops for the OSS, lays out the stakes: the publisher needs a win, and a pulp yarn that further vilifies the Rosenbergs and Communism seems like just the thing. Why a junior editor would be given such an important task is a slow-burn mystery that propels readers through Prose's recreation of 1950s paranoia, complete with an appearance from Senator Joseph McCarthy's minion and future Trump mentor Roy Cohn. Sidelong commentary on Landry's sexual predation, shot through a lens informed by the #MeToo era, adds further resonance. This is Prose at the top of her game. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
It's the steamy summer of 1953, the year the Rosenbergs are executed for spying. Our hapless hero, Simon Putnam, a Jewish boy from Coney Island, has just graduated from Harvard with a degree in Icelandic folklore and, predictably, no job prospects. But his uncle, famous literary critic Madison Putnam, snags him a junior editor gig at a boutique publishing house run by Warren Landry, a WASP-y former OSS spy during World War II. He taps Simon to work with Anya, the beautiful--dare we say, vixenlike--author of a novel portraying Ethel Rosenberg as a sexy Mata Hari type. Simon, whose mother knew Mrs. Rosenberg, wants to rewrite the book with a more nuanced story line, but he's falling in love with Anya. Plus, Landry's publishing house is broke, and sales from this trashy spy novel could keep it afloat. VERDICT Prose's (Lovers at the Chameleon Club) exuberant, lighthearted novel immerses the reader in 1950s ambience, yet it's full of winks and nods to the current political climate. Simon, our overheated narrator, pulls us along as he stumbles into Cold War intrigue, and we're never sure which way the plot will turn until literally the last sentence. What a delightful read!--Reba Leiding, emerita, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A trashy anti-communist novel poses a moral dilemma for a young editor. On June 19, 1953, narrator Simon Putnam and his parents grimly watch a TV reporter announce that the Rosenbergs have been executed as Soviet spies. With her customary deft hand, Prose sketches the family dynamic as they comment on the coverage: Recent Harvard grad Simon loves his idealistic mother and cynical father but is embarrassed by the immigrant origins they share with the Rosenbergs. His mother grew up with Ethel on the Lower East Side, which is not something Simon wants getting around at Landry, Landry, and Bartlett, the distinguished publishing house where his uncle Madison, a feared literary critic, gets him an entry-level job. Simon hopes to follow Madison's tracks out of Coney Island, so he's thrilled when charismatic Warren Landry asks him to edit a manuscript, until he realizes that The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic depicts Ethel Rosenberg as a communist Mata Hari seducing every man in sight and, by the way, as guilty as hell. The firm is in dire financial shape, Warren confides; if Simon can make this mess "less bad" they could have a sorely needed bestseller. Tantalized by the prospect of a promotion, plus the alluring photo of author Anya Partridge, Simon suppresses his qualms and gets to work. Hilarious excerpts from the appalling manuscript provide Prose's characteristic humor in a story that otherwise has a more serious tone than her norm. Numerous hints are dropped that this project is not what it seems, and readers who know their American cultural history may spot the big reveal well before Simon does, but Prose maintains our interest with a vivid portrait of his internal conflicts: guilt over his participation in "this commodification of Ethel's tragedy" intensified by guilt over distancing himself from his parents; lust for the intriguingly weird Anya conflicting with a crush on supernice publicity director Elaine Geller. Simon gets a stinging reality check in the novel's climax, but he also gets a partial revenge and finds his life's direction in the mildly improbable but touching final developments. Smart, assured fiction from a master storyteller and thoughtful social commentator. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
