âThe tangiest literary-world roman Ă clef to emerge from the â80sâit is almost certainly the best of the past four decades . . . Gertler has a high style, a feel for social comedy and a deadly eye for detail.â âDwight Garner, New York Times
New York, the early 1980s. Newman Sykes is a feared book critic, failed novelist, and savage interviewer, with a must-read monthly column and a weekly segment on the local TV news. His friend and rival Howard Ritchie is a fiction editor whose keen eye and near-lunatic force of will have turned a sleepy university journal into a star factory.
The two men share more than high standards and a hunger for the next big discovery; they also share keys to Newmanâs Village pied Ă terre, where (unbeknownst to their wives) each has his own set of sheets. This unsavory arrangement is strained to the breaking point when Howard receives a story from one âD. Reeve,â a newcomer, who turns out to be the fresh talent theyâve both been waiting forâand a woman with ambition and appetites as ruthless as their own.