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A Novel
by Daniel Lefferts
Book Reviewed by:A searing debut novel about a striving finance student, the line between ambition and greed, and the disordered politics of our 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 enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than Alistair could have imagined. By the time Alistair uncovers his employer's secret, his life is in danger and he's forced to go 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, throws in his lot with an artist-provocateur whose latest project transforms 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, clear-eyed investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in twenty-first century America.
The push and pull between Mark, Elijah and Alistair is part of what makes this book so fascinating. Free spirit Elijah, with a penchant for pushing back against his and Mark's bourgeois lifestyle, is the one who initially suggests inviting a third person into their bed. But it is straight-laced Mark who falls the hardest for Alistair, feeling that in their desire for respectability they are on some level kindred spirits. Elijah can sense Mark's passion for their new lover, which only drives the longtime partners further apart. Alistair's presence uncovers and deepens pre-existing tensions between Mark and Elijah. Ways and Means is not a satire, but it is quietly witty, especially in the dialogue. With its cast of morally gray but profoundly likable characters, this book skewers the worlds of finance and high-profile contemporary art while addressing themes of generational trauma and redemption...continued
Full Review
(818 words)
(Reviewed by Jillian Bell).
Recent research suggests about 4-5% of Americans are currently in relationships that break the convention of monogamy. While there is some fluidity to the terms used for different types of non-monogamy, an open relationship often refers to a couple being romantically and emotionally, but not sexually, monogamous, while polyamory often refers to the practice or option of having multiple relationships of a sexual and romantic nature. The common factor in all consensually non-monogamous relationships is that, by definition, everyone involved in the arrangement is aware of and consents to the terms of it.
With the visibility of non-monogamous relationships on the rise, we're also seeing more of them in the literary world. In Ways and ...
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Deadly serious in ambition, wildly entertaining in execution, Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut that charts the fault lines of class, politics, art, and desire during a period of American crisis. Every line of this gorgeous novel glows with Daniel Lefferts' intelligence and compassion.
