Writes Hamid in a characteristically onrushing sentence, “The mood in town was changing, more rapidly than its complexion, for Anders could not as yet perceive any real shift in the number of dark people on the streets...but the mood, yes, the mood was changing, and the shelves of the stores were more bare, and at night the roads were more abandoned.” Anders returns to work at a local gym, where he finds that the few remaining White people are looking at him with “quick, evasive stares,” no longer trusting the man they called “doc” for his sore-muscle healing powers. When Anders’ father—the last White man of Hamid’s title—dies, there are no more of the “pale people who wandered like ghosts” in the town, and as time passes those who are left slowly lose their “memories of whiteness.” Hamid’s story is poignant and pointed, speaking to a more equitable future in which widespread change, though confusing and dislocating in the moment, can serve to erase the divisions of old as they fade away with the passing years. A provocative tale that raises questions of racial and social justice at every turn.
18
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1 june 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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THE WORK WIFE
Hart, Alison B. Graydon House (368 pp.) $26.99 | July 19, 2022 978-1-525-89976-8 Inside the perfectly curated fortress of privilege that is the estate of a Hollywood billionaire, threatening tremors of a #MeToo earthquake are felt. “Ted Stabler—the wunderkind who’d directed The Starfighter trilogy...was a late riser, but once he began his day he worked tirelessly, often until one or two in the morning. Teeing up the conditions he needed to task-shift seamlessly without squandering a minute would take all of Zanne’s focus.” Hart’s knowing, ripped-from-theheadlines debut takes us behind the scenes of Ted’s world on a day of reckoning—the day the Stablers host a “Bump and Pump” benefit for low-income women. Things get off to an inauspicious start when the party monkey pisses on the computer server, and sure enough, this is the day each of Ted’s three wives (first wife, second wife, work wife) will watch the ugly truths of her position explode. Zanne Klein—described by her girlfriend as “Snow White, if Snow White was a daddy”—is the work wife, a queen bee in the hive of workers that includes everything from Ivy League graduates to a retired NFL star. Thanks to this group of people, Holly Stabler, Ted’s second wife, spends her days in what looks like glamorous ease but is actually infantilized hell. “Joe paid her bills, Flora made her bed, Erin made her doctor’s appointments and filled her prescriptions, Ilya and James drove her children to school, Katya packed their lunches, Mark hired and fired her household staff, Lauren tried on her clothes, Erin signed her name and impersonated her voice, Dawn and Zanne delivered her messages to Ted when he ducked her calls.” Holly is one of the few who know that Ted was previously married to a Korean American woman named Phoebe Lee, now an English teacher in the Bay Area. Phoebe was co-producer of the first two Starfighter flicks, but the couple split up before following through on their plan to produce her passion project, and she dropped out of sight. Now, after 20 years, she’s back in town. This book flies on a magic carpet of seamless, intricate detail, much of it from work experience the author acknowledges in an afterword. Whether we’re dropping in on Holly with her glam squad or watching in wonder as headset-wearing assistants track the movements of their bosses like world leaders, there’s never a moment’s slip in authenticity or momentum. Riveting details of a fascinating hidden world support a ruthless takedown of misogyny and entitlement. One hell of a debut.
