Ways and means A novel

Daniel Lefferts

Book - 2024

""Triumphant . . . Captivating, fresh, witty and brilliant, Lefferts is a true, original, American voice and this novel is not to be missed." -Kristopher Jansma, author of Why We Came to the City In this searing debut novel, a striving finance student confronts the line between ambition and greed and the disordered politics of his era Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a better life by pursuing a career in high finance. But by the spring of 2016, Alistair's plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him, he's mired in student debt, and in his desperation, he's gone to work for an enigmat...ic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than any Alistair could have imagined. By the time Alistair uncovers his employer's secret, his life is in danger and now he's on the run. Meanwhile, Alistair's paramours, an older couple named Mark and Elijah, must face their own moral and financial dilemmas. Mark, nearing the end of his trust fund, takes a job with his father's mobile home empire that forces him to confront the unsavory foundations of his family's wealth, while Elijah, a failed painter, hitches his wagon to an artist-provocateur engaged on a project that makes the country's political chaos into a thing of alluring, amoral beauty. As the nation hurtles toward a breaking point, Alistair, Mark, and Elijah must band together to save one another and themselves. Propulsive, exuberant, and profoundly observed, Ways and Means is an indelible, deeply moving investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in the American 21st century"--

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Subjects
Genres
Novels
Published
New York, NY : The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Daniel Lefferts (author)
Physical Description
388 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781419768194
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Lefferts, a PW contributing editor, debuts with the ambitious and exciting story of a business student, the 30-something gay couple he's been sleeping with, and the economic forces at work during the rise of Trump in 2016. Alistair, 22, is in his final semester at NYU when he learns that Herve, the billionaire he's been working for, wants him dead. (The details of Herve's shady dealings are gradually revealed--at the outset, readers only know the arrangement is earning Alistair $10,000 per month.) Mark and Elijah, the couple Alistair's been seeing for the past year, are on the outs when he announces he's skipping town. Mark, who has been supporting Elijah for several years on his dwindling trust fund, is heartbroken over Alistair's departure. He moves home to New Jersey, where his father, the owner of a chain of trailer parks, plans to cash out to Wall Street. Meanwhile, Elijah, who can't afford an apartment, crashes with his friend Jay, an edgelord artist whose videos of underwear and MAGA hat--clad gay models are funded by Herve's brother. Alistair, a talented and humble striver who evokes John Grisham's Mitch McDeere except for a self-sabotaging refusal to glad hand, hides out from Herve with his mother in Binghamton, N.Y. Lefferts's nimble sense of scale enables him to convincingly depict the blue-chip firms who rejected Alistair and exploit the housing market, as well as to zoom in for poignant and subtle psychological realism. The results are electrifying. Agent: Chris Clemans, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)This review has been updated for clarity.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Ambition is risky business. Against the backdrop of the 2016 election, as Alistair McCabe prepares to flee mysterious and dire circumstances--along with his education at NYU, where he's a senior, and a promising finance career--he fields a surprise call from his mother, Maura. Reluctant to tell her that he's about to disappear, he lies and says he's on his way to a class called "Futures and Options." Readers might groan at the double entendre, but it makes a point: In this novel, the personal, often bodily drama of coming-of-age is inextricable from the inhuman forces of capital. We also follow Mark Landmesser and Elijah Pasternak, two unmotivated artists whose relationship sours as Mark's trust fund dries up. A prolonged affair with the two of them catapults Alistair--whose successes at school and in sex have not yielded success in navigating the networking-fest of corporate finance--into a lucrative but clandestine arrangement with a disgraced financier and a reclusive billionaire. The story's alternating timelines recount Alistair's entanglement in and disentanglement from Mark and Elijah and this scheme--his arrival in New York and his escape. Lefferts also flashes back to Alistair's childhood, when, despite his mother's humanistic ideals, borderline poverty taught him to covet money, comfort, and the power to free her from debt. In college, Alistair's ambition takes on a carnal quality. As he gropes toward upward mobility, he often recounts sexual exploits, spending sprees, and academic triumphs in a single breath. Luxury goods become "commercial iterations of the flesh," money "almost sexual in the way it [lights] up his brain's pleasure center." As sex and political struggle swirl together, Alistair realizes that all "his chasing of money…amounted to one great thrusting out and forth." Although Lefferts' storytelling can land a bit on the nose, the underlying character drama is compelling. A straightforward take on inherited privilege and hardship. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.