Ways and Means
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
** LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION 2024 FIRST NOVEL PRIZE **
A searing debut novel about a striving finance student, the line between ambition and greed, and the disordered politics of our era
“[An] auspicious debut . . . a wildly entertaining drama of ambition and consequence.” —Sam Sacks, WALL STREET JOURNAL
“An absolute riot...Thrilling...Lefferts's wry examination of the societal and economic shifts that led to the once unthinkable hits incredibly close to home.” —Chris Murphy, VANITY FAIR
“[A] sexy political thriller.” —Charles Arrowsmith, WASHINGTON POST
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lefferts, a PW contributing editor, debuts with the ambitious and exciting story of a business student, the 30-something gay couple he's been sleeping with, and the economic forces at work during the rise of Trump in 2016. Alistair, 22, is in his final semester at NYU when he learns that Herve, the billionaire he's been working for, wants him dead. (The details of Herve's shady dealings are gradually revealed—at the outset, readers only know the arrangement is earning Alistair $10,000 per month.) Mark and Elijah, the couple Alistair's been seeing for the past year, are on the outs when he announces he's skipping town. Mark, who has been supporting Elijah for several years on his dwindling trust fund, is heartbroken over Alistair's departure. He moves home to New Jersey, where his father, the owner of a chain of trailer parks, plans to cash out to Wall Street. Meanwhile, Elijah, who can't afford an apartment, crashes with his friend Jay, an edgelord artist whose videos of underwear and MAGA hat–clad gay models are funded by Herve's brother. Alistair, a talented and humble striver who evokes John Grisham's Mitch McDeere except for a self-sabotaging refusal to glad hand, hides out from Herve with his mother in Binghamton, N.Y. Lefferts's nimble sense of scale enables him to convincingly depict the blue-chip firms who rejected Alistair and exploit the housing market, as well as to zoom in for poignant and subtle psychological realism. The results are electrifying.
