Devotion A novel

Madeline Stevens, 1987-

eAudio - 2019

Ella is flat broke: wasting away on bodega coffee, barely making rent, seducing the occasional strange man who might buy her dinner. Unexpectedly, an Upper East Side couple named Lonnie and James rescue her from her empty bank account, offering her a job as a nanny and ushering her into their moneyed world. Ella's days are now spent tending to the baby in their elegant brownstone or on extravagant excursions with the family. Both women are just 26-but unlike Ella, Lonnie has a doting husband and son, unmistakable artistic talent, and old family money. Ella is mesmerized by Lonnie's girlish affection and disregard for the normal boundaries of friendship and marriage. Convinced there must be a secret behind Lonnie's seemingly e...ffortless life, Ella begins sifting through her belongings, meticulously cataloguing lipstick tubes and baby teeth and scraps of writing. All the while, Ella's resentment grows, but so does an inexplicable and dizzying attraction. Soon Ella will be immersed so deeply in her cravings-for Lonnie's lifestyle, her attention, her lovers-that she may never come up for air. Riveting, propulsive, and startling, Devotion is a masterful debut novel where mismatched power collides with blinding desire, incinerating our perceptions of femininity, lust, and privilege.

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Subjects
Published
[United States] : HarperAudio 2019.
Language
English
Corporate Author
hoopla digital
Main Author
Madeline Stevens, 1987- (author)
Corporate Author
hoopla digital (-)
Other Authors
Sarah Naughton (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Online Access
Instantly available on hoopla.
Cover image
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 audio file (8hr., 48 min.)) : digital
Format
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ISBN
9780062930521
Access
AVAILABLE FOR USE ONLY BY IOWA CITY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CONTRACTING GOVERNMENTS OF JOHNSON COUNTY, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, HILLS, AND LONE TREE (IA).
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

In what could be described as The Nanny Diaries meets Single White Female, Stevens' debut introduces readers to the sometimes glittering, sometimes gritty underbelly of New York City childcare. Impoverished Oregon transplant Ella lands a gig babysitting the son of effervescent Lonnie and her husband, James. Lonnie and Ella are both 26, but couldn't lead more different lives. Ella soon finds that her job responsibilities have more to do with entertaining Lonnie than taking care of sixteen-month-old William. Ella is enamored with the lifestyle that Lonnie, James, and their friends maintain: lavish parties, weekends upstate, MDMA-fueled threesomes. In the dizzying first few months, Ella can't parse whether she wants to be with them, or wants to literally be them. Lonnie and Ella make twin unlikeable protagonists, their hijinks the repugnant pastimes of the privileged and entitled. Their kinship is doomed from the start, only growing more suspenseful and unhinged as the story unfolds; every turn of the page will leave readers wondering which woman will snap first. Perfect for fans of Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter (2016).--Courtney Eathorne Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Stevens's intriguing yet uneven debut is a descent into obsession that follows Ella, a young woman from backwater Oregon who becomes a nanny for a wealthy 20-something couple in New York. Before acquiring her job, Ella's meager existence in the Big Apple consists of barely having enough to eat and encouraging strangers to buy her dinner to stave off starvation. Though Ella's charge is 16-month-old William, Ella spends most of her time observing his mother, Lonnie--whom readers know at the outset will leave her family. Ella investigates Lonnie and James's house, reading Lonnie's diary, looking through her photo albums, and pilfering the occasional trinket. Ella is aware Lonnie cheats on James with Carlow, their friend, which motivates her to attempt a seduction with Carlow in an attempt to get closer to Lonnie. At a writer's retreat, Lonnie encourages Ella to swap identities with her to mess with the woman who leads the retreat, allowing Ella to revel in being Lonnie for a time. Ella is entranced by Lonnie's beauty and is even more drawn to her after she discovers parallels with her own family history. The tension is reduced by revealing Lonnie's disappearance up front, but Stevens meticulously elevates the mundane days of a nanny by injecting Ella's life with her all-consuming adoration for Lonnie. This debut makes for a stimulating character study. (Aug.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

DEBUT "Obsession" would be a more accurate title for this first novel about a young unemployed woman who takes a job as a nanny and then becomes excessively attached to her new employer, Lonnie. Ella, who is from a small town in Oregon, is the same age as Lonnie (26) but has had none of Lonnie's advantages, much less a husband and son. If Ella is seeking her fortune in Manhattan, she is failing miserably; she's so broke, she can hardly afford to buy enough to eat. Lonnie grew up wealthy, but this hasn't brought her happiness. Both young women grew up as motherless children, and both seem stuck in a kind of permanently alienated adolescence. Both do genuinely care for Lonnie's toddler son, William, but they are sidetracked by the usual toxic mix of drinking, drugs, and compulsive sex, with not only Lonnie's husband, James, but also his friend Carlow. VERDICT Ella has an awkward encounter with a drunken Carlow after she finally parts from Lonnie. He seems desperate and sad, a good description of all four characters, who can't find their way to adulthood in this morose novel.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Reduced to picking up men in bars in hopes of trading sexual favors for a meal, Ella is definitely down on her luck. So when an offer comes to work as a nanny for a wealthy young couple, she jumps at the chance. But the job may cost more than she bargained for.Ensconced in a lovely town house between Park and Lexington avenues, Lonnie and James seem to have everything Ella never had. Both women lost their mothers early, but Lonnie's died young, leaving her to the care of an overbearing father and private school, while Ella's simply packed up and left. Instead of struggling to make rent, Lonnie luxuriates in writing, easily living off her own trust fund and James' work in finance. Yet Lonnie seems to invite disaster, trysting with their friend Carlow practically under James' nose. Soon Ella finds herself drawn into games of sexual risk, assumed identities, and drug-addled escapades. With each character unstable and unreliable, Stevens' debut novel shimmers with tension. Ella isn't simply a damsel in distress; she might be a villain herself. Stealing mementos from Lonnie's closet, borrowing her clothes, reading (and rewriting) her journal (not-so-cleverly hidden in the freezer)Ella treasures these souvenirs, squirreling away rings and someone else's memories with equal abandon. What everyone in this novel wants is both crystal clearmoney, power, attentionand deliciously obscure. Why is Ella so drawn to Lonnie? Why is Lonnie so eager to pull Ella into a tangled web of marital and extramarital relationships? Stevens delicately pulls the threads together, ever so slowly, until a fateful night strangles any possibility of changing the course of anyone's fate. And then Lonnie disappears.A darkly glittering jewel from a promising new voice in thrillers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.