First published 2006
Marina Thwaite lives in the shadow of her famous journalist father, working fitfully on a book about children's clothing while drifting through Manhattan's social circles. Her two closest friends face their own struggles as they approach thirty. Danielle, earnest and hardworking, toils as an underpaid television producer while questioning her relationship choices. Julius, a freelance writer and aspiring critic, burns through money and relationships with equal recklessness. The three friends orbit each other and Marina's charismatic father, their ambitions colliding with reality in a city that promises everything and delivers complications. When Marina's book contract materializes and romantic entanglements shift their dynamics, each character confronts the gap between their younger selves' expectations and their current circumstances. Messud captures how friendship evolves under pressure, how privilege shapes opportunity, and how the approach of middle age forces a reckoning with unfulfilled dreams.
Genres: american-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family
Setting: Manhattan
Period: 21st-century
346 pages · Kindle Edition · Vintage