The Rich People Have Gone Away
From the critically acclaimed author of The Travelers
-
- £3.99
-
- £3.99
Publisher Description
Ordinary New Yorkers are brought together in a story of betrayal, race, what connects us to each other – and what sets us apart
***A ROXANE GAY BOOK CLUB 2024 SELECTION***
'A marvel... A masterpiece' PAUL HARDING
'Prescient and profound' BRYAN WASHINGTON
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his blonde, blue-eyed, pregnant wife Darla head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their fancy apartment building has this privilege: not Xavier, the restless teenager in the Cardi B t-shirt, nor Darla’s black best friend Ruby and her partner Katsumi, who stay behind to save their restaurant.
During an upstate hike, Theo lets slip a long-held secret about his mixed-up ancestry – and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect at the centre of a front-page police search for the perfect missing woman.
'A lush study' RAVEN LEILANI
'Riveting and original' CHARMAINE WILKERSON
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The striking latest from Porter (The Travelers) revolves around a woman's disappearance during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla Jacobson, travel to Upstate New York from their Brooklyn condo in March 2020 with plans to hole up in Darla's mother's summer cottage. While on a hike in the Catskills, they get into a heated argument, during which Theo reveals his Black and Indigenous heritage and Darla, who is white, accuses him of being passive aggressive. She then runs into the woods and disappears. After Theo returns to Brooklyn, he reports her disappearance to the police, then hooks up with a previous fling (he and Darla have an open marriage, and he's only nominally concerned about her). Porter flips through several characters' perspectives including Darla's, detailing how she adopts the name of her friend and neighbor Ruby Black and lays low in Niagara Falls. Also featured are Darla's worried mother, who hires a private investigator to search for her, and Ruby, who stays in Brooklyn to watch over the restaurant she owns and is livid when she learns Darla is using her name. Porter keenly explores themes of generational and racial privilege and a community's fragile bonds. This one makes the lockdown worth revisiting.
