The Award
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition, but it quickly evolves into something darker and more disturbing. Matthew Pearl’s addictive and propulsive novel has the twisted nightmare logic of a Patricia Highsmith thriller."—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can't Win and Mrs. Fletcher
"A propulsive and gripping novel about the literary world, ambition, deception and murder and the twisted corner where they all intersect. Matthew Pearl grabs you from the first sentence and doesn’t let go."—Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Night We Lost Him
The author of Save Our Souls and The Dante Club makes his eagerly awaited return to fiction with this irreverent and propulsive novel about a young writer trying to make his way through a cutthroat literary scene that turns deadly.
David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.
He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.
Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.
Suddenly Silas is interested—if intensely spiteful.
But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.
Fate intervenes—with shocking consequences. . . .
With the wit and psychological wisdom of The Plot and The Winner, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pearl (The Dante Chamber) takes literary ambition to macabre extremes in this gleefully wicked satire. Insecure writer David Trent is approaching 30 and struggling to publish his first novel while his fiancée, Bonnie, supports him financially. David is ecstatic to learn their new landlord in Cambridge, Mass., is Silas Hale, an award-winning novelist and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He hopes to find a mentor in Silas, who lives downstairs from them with his wife. Instead, Silas turns out to be a nasty piece of work. When winter approaches, he refuses to heat Bonnie and David's apartment, expects David to shovel the driveway, and warns him, "Do not ever make eye contact with us." The next year, David publishes his novel with a small press and it unexpectedly wins a prestigious award, causing Silas to change his tune and invite David to his holiday party. But when David's newfound status is threatened on the night of the party, he takes drastic measures, and the evening ends with a dead body. While the plot is far from believable, Pearl credibly portrays the reckless David and fair-weather Silas, mercilessly laying bare the foibles of their insular and backbiting community of writers. Readers won't be able to resist this.
