The Spectators
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A shocking crime triggers a media firestorm for a controversial talk show host in this provocative novel—a story of redemption, a nostalgic portrait of New York City, and a searing indictment of our culture of spectacle.
One of the The New York Times’s “10 Books to Watch for in April” • “Jennifer duBois is a brilliant writer.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove
Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery—both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie’s past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.
In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man’s downfall through the perspectives of two spectators—Cel, Mattie’s skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past.
With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention—and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.
Praise for The Spectators
With The Spectators, duBois is staking out larger literary territory. The new novel is full of small pleasures that accumulate as proof that this writer knows her stuff. . . . DuBois’s mastery of . . . details earns our trust as she expands The Spectators into a billowing meditation on the responsibility of public figures to contribute something worthwhile to the culture. Although her book takes place decades ago, duBois’s message has a contemporary urgency as well.”—The New York Times
“Heart-rending and visceral . . . DuBois’s language is dexterous, and her pacing impressive. . . . The Spectators is a treatise on the media’s power and a finely wrought example of intimate pain.”—USA Today
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
DuBois (Cartwheel) spans some 30 years of New York City history, moving between the queer gestalt of the 1970s and the television-junkie culture of the 1990s in her solid third novel. The story revolves around Matthew Miller, a sensationalist Jerry Springer like talk show host who becomes the target of unwelcome media attention following a high school shooting whose perpetrators turn out to be fans of his The Mattie M. Show. Readers follow Mattie's put-upon publicist Cel as she navigates a treacherous landscape of scandal and recusal. But as the skeletons in Mattie's closet begin to emerge, readers become privy to the story of Semi Caldwell (who narrates a portion of the book), his secret past lover, when "Mattie" was simply Matthew, an upstanding lawyer and would-be politician in the heady days of Stonewall, before AIDS ravaged the gay community in the 1980s. As the story cuts between eras, the media circus that precipitates Mattie's fall from grace comes to mirror his abandonment of Semi, who eventually shows up at his TV studio looking for answers. DuBois beautifully handles Semi's half of the novel, told in first person, but the third-person Cel sections, in which she plays detective to piece together Mattie's past life, lack the power of Semi's. Though somewhat uneven, this is nevertheless a powerful novel.
