THE WRITING RETREAT by Julia Bartz

THE WRITING RETREAT

Bartz, Julia Emily Bestler/Atria (320 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 21, 2023 978-1-9821-9945-6

Five writers, four weeks, and a $1 million book deal for the lucky winner. Unless they disappear first…. Having just turned 30, Alex has to face up to some hard truths: She hates her job; she’s been miserable since breaking up with her best friend; and she’s mired in writer’s block, which makes it pretty hard to be discovered and published. Then, a call from the blue: A writer friend has finagled her a space at an elite writers retreat at the estate of the mysterious, glamorous novelist Roza Vallo. From the very first night at Blackbriar, though, it’s clear that this is no warm and fuzzy workshop, and Roza is no gentle mentor. Each writer must craft a proposal for a full-length novel, then crank out 3,000 words a day to be critiqued. Despite the trappings of luxury—food and wine and an unparalleled library—there’s no ignoring the fact that the writers are trapped; there’s no Wi-Fi or cell service to be found. For Alex, the sense of disquiet grows as her research deepens; with Roza’s urging, she has decided to write a novel about the original inhabitants of the house, a wealthy tycoon and his waitress-turned-medium wife who were both found dead after the wife apparently channeled a demoness named Lamia. When one of the other writers disappears, Alex can’t help but wonder whether occult history is repeating itself. Or is there a much more sinister (and human) plot behind this writing retreat? Despite Alex’s somewhat whiny nature, the book’s pacing—a slow roll of dread and horror, especially in the first half—is exceptional. Bartz hits all the gothic highlights, but, far from feeling stale, they work.

A perfect winter night’s haunting.

PLAYHOUSE

Bausch, Richard Knopf (352 pp.) $29.00 | Feb. 14, 2023 9780451494849

A novel about a Memphis theater company envelops onstage classical tragedy within offstage domestic farce. Like a playbill, the novel opens with a “Cast of Characters,” beginning with “The Three Main Characters” and followed by “And the People Around Them.” The three principals are Thaddeus Deerforth, general manager of the Shakespeare Theater of Memphis; Malcolm Ruark, a recently disgraced local TV news anchor–turned-thespian; and Claudette Bradley, one of the company’s principal actors. Each of them has a troubled marriage—two recently ended, and one looks increasingly shaky. Further complicating their stories, as they prepare for their newly renovated theater’s grand relaunch with King Lear, are issues of alcoholism and substance abuse, aged parents with dementia, sexual impulses they find difficult to understand and control. The people around them number a few dozen, and it’s tough to keep them straight even with the cast list, but they include a couple of aging lechers—a visiting director from academe and a lead actor known from a Netflix series—who bring plenty of their own issues and have trouble adjusting to Memphis culture, and a pair of billionaire donors, the “Cosmetics Tycoons,” who are funding this attempt to put Memphis on the map of world-class theater cities. What could go wrong? The romantic entanglements, past and present, can be impossible to predict and tough to keep straight, while the dramatic production itself must please the billionaires, impress the city, and manage to keep people who can’t stand each other working together. Outwardly, some of the plot verges on slapstick, but inwardly, there is quiet desperation. “He began wanting a fight,” Bausch writes of one character at a pivotal juncture. “Something to bring it all to a head, some sort of catharsis. But he wouldn’t act on it.” So the reader also waits for some catharsis, or something to happen, to move this plot and these characters forward.

If only these characters could decide whether “to be or not to be,” but that’s a different tragedy.

THE FRENCHMAN

Beaumont, Jack Blackstone (368 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 28, 2023 9798200862009

Beaumont reveals a world of international espionage that’s at once exhilarating, morally repugnant, and deadly. A lengthy prologue introduces earnest Pakistani missile engineer Amin Sharwaz, who’s making daily reports to his supervisor, an imperious figure called the Colonel, from a convention in Singapore. Secretly anxious to finish his project and move his family to Europe, Amin makes the fatal mistake of oversharing with someone he knows as Marcus Aubrac, who works for the French government and has offered to create a new life for him in France if he can share classified information on Pakistani missile development. This Frenchman is actually intelligence operative Alec de Payns. When Alec learns that Amin was tortured and murdered—along with his family—on his return to Pakistan, he’s shaken but by necessity compartmentalizes his disquiet. Two years later, a botched assignment in Palermo once more brings the life-and-death realities of his dangerous career into clear focus and leads to a meeting with his boss, Christophe Sturt, at which he lies to protect himself. In the missions that follow, Alec and his team pose as filmmakers and hunt a ruthless terrorist. Beaumont, a former operative with the French foreign secret service, has produced a debut novel long on the procedural nuts and bolts of espionage: There are acronyms, agents with multiple pseudonyms (one wryly known as Shrek), complex professional relationships, and a plot that crisscrosses Europe and Asia with

dizzying twists and turns. His savvy focus adds timeliness and a stimulating sense of verisimilitude, rewarding readers who can follow his intricate plot. Simmering beneath it all is Alec’s growing desire to leave his dangerous work and lead a normal life with his wife, Romy, and their children.

An action-packed spy thriller with an authentic feel.

THE STRANGERS

Bilbao, Jon Trans. by Katie Whittemore Dalkey Archive (128 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jan. 3, 2023 9781628974553

After mysterious lights soar over their village, a Spanish couple receives two strange visitors.

Jon and Katharina drudge through remote freelance gigs at Jon’s childhood home, a large house on the Cantabrian coast that they’re housesitting for the winter. The two work on separate floors and grow distant as they settle into their separate routines, tension and boredom filling the gap between them. One rainy night, they observe an unsettling light display outside their window: There’s a red triangle, a green circle, and a blue oval soaring and seemingly dancing in the sky. By the next morning, the village is flooded with ufologists, who make camp on the coast and heckle the locals for their accounts of the previous night’s events. As if this wasn’t enough to shake Jon and Katharina out of their stagnancy, they are then approached by other visitors: Jon’s distant cousin Markel and Virginia, his withdrawn, enigmatic assistant, who seek a brief respite from their world travels. Jon has no memory of having met Markel—who claims to have been raised by his grandfather in Chile—and is hesitant to invite the intruders to stay. At his parents’ (and, surprisingly, Katharina’s) insistence, Jon relents, and Markel and Virginia make themselves comfortable. Perhaps too comfortable. The story’s pace accelerates as the visitors transgress their hosts’ boundaries, Virginia becoming increasingly unpredictable and