The long corner

Maksik's scathing satire (after Shelter in Place) sets its sights on a pretentious art colony. Solomon Fields, a journalist turned copywriter in the "dusk" of his 30s, abandons his successful Manhattan career after an emissary from an Edenic experimental settlement called the Coded Garden approaches him at a party with an invitation to visit. It's 2017, and the nightmare of Trump's new world has made him vulnerable to the pitch. There, on a remote island, he's overcome by the scents of jasmine, frangipani, eucalyptus, and citrus trees, and learns more about the founder, Sebastian Light, who insists on his guests' absolute devotion to their work (otherwise "you are a fraud," explains "apprentice" Siddhartha). Solomon is put through a humiliating regimen of sexual healing in a sauna and attends an art exhibition where the work of other guests is given ruthless judgments. It all leads to an incendiary conclusion that exposes the shocking cataclysmic consequences of Light's "benevolent dictatorship," which turns out to have strangely Trumpian overtones. In the balance, Solomon, who was raised by a Marxist mother and a hedonistic grandmother who survived the Holocaust, recognizes the haunting irony of the slogan stamped on the metal entrance gates to the camp, which reads "beauty will set you free." Readers will revel in the riotous upending of a self-absorbed personality. (May)

A young man wrestles with his artistic soul at the retreat of an enigmatic art patron. In 2017, as he reaches his mid-30s, writer Solomon Fields has abandoned a promising journalistic career for the financial security of a spirit-crushing job in the advertising industry and a relationship with a young woman named Charity whose life is bound up in the striving of materialist culture. He also feels trapped between the clashing worldviews of his maternal grandmother, Lina, a Holocaust survivor and advocate for seizing the pleasures of life and art, as she did after fleeing Berlin for New York City in 1940, and his mother, Charlotte, a Marxist-turned-conservative and passionate defender of Israel. At the invitation of a woman named Plume, he travels to a tropical island where her employer, the mysterious Sebastian Light, has created a haven for artists he calls The Coded Garden. When Sol arrives, he meets people with names like Crystalline and Siddhartha, at first observing and then participating in the retreat's curious rituals, including one bacchanalian evening in a sweat lodge, all the while fending off persistent questions by the residents about whether he intends to write about them. There are recurring conversations about the meaning of art and frequent flashbacks to moments in Sol's relationship with Lina, one that's much closer than his with Charlotte. Though the questions Maksik raises are provocative ones, the novel too often has a static feel as Sol struggles to solve the riddle of whether Light is a sincere patron of aspiring artists, a pretentious charlatan, or something much more sinister. While the portrait of Sol's colorful and outspoken grandmother is vibrant and entertaining, Light and his acolytes in The Coded Garden too often feel more like devices for advancing competing arguments than fully realized fictional characters. The spark of a story about the challenges of a creative life fails to catch flame. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.