Something rotten

Lipstein (The Vegan) explores contemporary masculinity and culture clashes in his fascinating latest. Reuben, an NPR host, loses his job after he accidentally leaves his camera running during a Zoom work meeting while having sex with his wife, Cecilie, a journalist for the New York Times. The pair regroup for the summer in her native Denmark, where Reuben feels rudderless. Not only has he been canceled and made a laughing stock, but his self-worth has been shaken to the core, leaving him with a "vague guilt that seemed to follow him like a scent." In this vulnerable state, he's drawn to Mikkel, a charismatic investigative reporter who has just exposed sexual assault allegations against the leader of Denmark's far-right nationalist party. Mikkel acts as instigator and sage to his timid American acquaintance, who is fascinated by the Dane's "ironic, combative, lewd, bacheloresque... brand of masculinity" and drunkenly accedes to Mikkel's urging to shave his head and get an ill-considered tattoo. Cecilie, meanwhile, reconnects with her ex-boyfriend Jonas, who has been diagnosed with a fatal brain disorder but, with Mikkel's input, is refusing the operation that could save his life. Mikkel's motives are opaque, and the question of whether he wants to help, hurt, or merely toy with the passive Reuben and Jonas animates Lipstein's tense narrative. The revelations, when they come, are satisfying, and meaty considerations of ethics and truth round out the novel's entertaining depiction of an American innocent abroad and his European Svengali. This razor-sharp morality tale is Lipstein's best yet. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Jan.)

A former NPR personality and his Danish wife have their lives upended by a summer in Copenhagen. Reuben is canceled. Dismissed unceremoniously from his job on public radio after having been caught in flagrante delicto with his wife during a work Zoom, he's now a stay-at-home dad in Brooklyn. ("Reuben had become a victim as only a man could, refusing himself everything until his dignity had been returned, intact.") His wife, Cecilie, has a stellar career of her own as aNew York Times reporter, but when she finally has a chance to take maternity leave, she can't wait to pack up Reuben and their baby, Arne, and head to her mother's home near Copenhagen. Upon being reunited with her group of friends--all journalists--Cecilie learns that one, her former boyfriend Jonas, has been diagnosed with a serious neurological disorder. It becomes her mission to convince him to undergo a potentially life-saving, but risky, treatment. Meanwhile, Reuben falls under the powerful sway of another, the charismatic Mikkel. Reuben becomes obsessed with the notion that Mikkel represents the opposite of everything ailing the American man: "authentic," unapologetic, decisive. When Mikkel takes Reuben under his wing, it will have surprisingly far-reaching consequences. With his third novel, Lipstein has created a kind of trilogy of young New York men in ethically dubious circumstances, mostly of their own making. (This time, though, the novel contains a dual point-of-view from both Reuben and Cecilie, broadening the palette.) One of Lipstein's gifts is his slipperiness--just as the reader feels a character's foibles are being mocked or even pitied, the target shapeshifts, the moral questions twisting and dissolving. If this all sounds like abstract philosophical fun, don't worry: Lipstein knows his way around a plot. An interrogation of the nature of truth, virtue, and reality, cloaked as a page-turning novel of escalating crises. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.