Famous Men
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jul 14, 2026
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of Marlena comes a vivid, uncompromising novel about a young woman looking for a father and finding herself.
“Julie Buntin understands the complexity of morality, declining easy answers to difficult questions about art and ethics as well as sex and desire. I tore through it.”—Rumaan Alam, author of Entitlement and Leave the World Behind
“Haunting and knife-bright . . . Famous Men renders womanhood with unsettling clarity.”—Kiley Reid, author of Come and Get It and Such a Fun Age
The right book at the right time can change your life.
Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?
Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.
A gripping novel about ambition, parents and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the engrossing sophomore novel from Buntin (Marlena), an aspiring writer enters a complex relationship with a renowned author notorious for his romances with younger women. As a teen in small-town Michigan, Wilhelmina "Will" Miles is hounded by malicious rumors about her promiscuity and feels uncomfortable around her mother's leering boyfriend. She finds solace in the novels and poems of Nathaniel Fellow, who grew up in her town decades earlier and whom she suspects might be her father. In 2010, a 23-year-old Will moves to New York City to seek out Nathaniel, whom she learns is not her father, and who employs her in a vaguely defined assistant role. He supplies her with a credit card, lets her sit in on his poetry workshop, and eventually initiates a sexual relationship with her: "Not a love story," she narrates. "Instead, an arrangement." As Will benefits from Nathaniel's guidance and relies on his financial support, she keeps the details of their relationship secret, until a few years later, when a bombshell exposé about his treatment of female students requires her to pick a side. Thanks to Buntin's clear-eyed look at her leads' boundary-blurring relationship, the novel tells a complex story about how Nathaniel, at once majestic and pitiful, both expands and narrows Will's world, trapping her in a personal and professional limbo. It's a worthy addition to the post-#MeToo canon.
