Hammer
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An art auction house employee helps a Russian oligarch sell his prized collection, ensnaring himself in a dangerous romance and an even more treacherous political plot.
It’s 2013, and much of the world still reels from the global economic collapse. Yet in the auction rooms of London, artworks are selling for record-breaking prices. Seeking a place in this gilded world is Martin, a junior specialist at a prestigious auction house. Martin spends his days catering to the whims of obscenely wealthy clients and his nights drinking in grubby pubs with his demoralized roommate. However, a chance meeting with Marina, an old university friend, presents Martin with a chance to change everything.
Pursuing distraction from her failing marriage and from a career she doesn’t quite believe in, Marina draws Martin into her circle and that of her husband, Oleg, an art-collecting oligarch. Shaken by the death of his mother and chafing against his diminishing influence in his homeland, Oleg appears primed to change his own life—and perhaps to relinquish his priceless art collection long coveted by London’s auction houses. Martin is determined to secure the sale and transform his career. But his ambitions are threatened by factors he hasn’t reckoned with: a dangerous attraction between himself and Marina, and half-baked political plans through which Oleg aims to redeem himself and Russia but which instead imperil the safety of the oligarch and all those around him.
Hammer is a riveting, ambitious novel—at once a sharp art world exposé, a tense geopolitical thriller, and a brooding romance—that incisively explores the intersection of wealth, power, and desire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following We Begin Our Ascent, a story of a Tour de France rider, Reed casts his appraising eye on the equally cutthroat worlds of modern art and Russian politics in this well-observed if uneven outing. It opens with a bang, as Martin, an auction house employee, watches Russian oligarch Oleg Gorelov win a Basquiat painting after driving the bidding up to nearly $9 million. Oleg's wife, Marina, an old college friend of Martin's, secures Martin an invitation to the Russian's art bunker, which houses a lost painting by the Ukrainian avant-garde painter Kazimir Malevich, who ran afoul of the Stalin regime. Martin, who would like nothing more than to secure a sale of Oleg's art collection for his auction house, is an unassuming, almost purposely bland "puppy" figure who wins Oleg's trust even as he begins an affair with Marina. Oleg, meanwhile, considers selling his art to fund a quixotic campaign to unseat Vladimir Putin. The plot simmers too long, muting the impact of the characters' betrayals and machinations, but Reed is consistently excellent in his takes on art, money, and the ruthlessness of the auction house business: "We're like vampires. We're well-dressed. We're polite. But in the end, we'll need to feed," says Martin's boss. In the end this cool, restrained work doesn't quite reach the heat of the art market it depicts.
