First published 2004
Hugo Whittier has spent a decade hiding from the world in Waverly, his family's falling-apart mansion above the Hudson River. The upper-class dropout fills his days reading Montaigne, preparing elaborate meals, and chain-smoking cigarettes while nursing his hatred of humanity. His perfect isolation shatters when his brother Dennis arrives fleeing a bad marriage, followed by Hugo's estranged wife Sonia and their daughter Bellatrix. A doctor delivers news that should terrify him: he has Buerger's disease and will die unless he quits smoking. Instead, Hugo lights another cigarette. Death appeals to him more than change. As Christmas approaches, Hugo schemes sexually, meddles in everyone's relationships, and documents his thoughts in notebooks. He cooks what might be his last holiday feast while readers wonder if his bitter quarrel with life will finally end him. This is a story about a man choosing destruction over redemption, told in his own seductive voice.
Genres: american-fiction, addiction, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama, dark
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: destruction-over-redemption, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Waverly, Hudson River
Period: Christmas
368 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday
Content warnings: addiction, death, suicide