Those Who Knew
A Novel
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3.2 • 30 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by * NPR * Esquire * O, The Oprah Magazine * Real Simple * BBC * PopSugar * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * Lit Hub
“A gripping, astute, and deeply humane political thriller.” —The Boston Globe
“Mesmerizing [and] uncannily prescient.”—Los Angeles Times
A taut, timely novel about what a powerful politician thinks he can get away with and the group of misfits who finally bring him down, from the award-winning author of Ways to Disappear.
On an unnamed island country ten years after the collapse of a U.S.-supported regime, Lena suspects the powerful senator she was involved with back in her student activist days is taking advantage of a young woman who's been introducing him at rallies. When the young woman ends up dead, Lena revisits her own fraught history with the senator and the violent incident that ended their relationship.
Why didn't Lena speak up then, and will her family's support of the former regime still impact her credibility? What if her hunch about this young woman's death is wrong?
What follows is a riveting exploration of the cost of staying silent and the mixed rewards of speaking up in a profoundly divided country. Those Who Knew confirms Novey's place as an essential new voice in American fiction.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Poet and novelist Idra Novey gives us a lyrical and startling tale of three women living in an unnamed island nation whose fates intersect in unexpected ways. Those Who Knew sifts through the fallout from generations of personal and political violence to ask: How much of our own comfort and safety are we willing to risk to protect others? Novey’s exploration of a timely moral quandary is a profoundly beautiful testament to the power of quiet defiance—and female alliances.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novey's propulsive second novel (after Ways to Disappear) follows multiple perspectives of those affected and connected by Victor, a sometimes brutal yet widely beloved man in a position of political power. In an unnamed island nation in the early aughts, Maria P., a young woman who has been introducing the liberal young senator at his rallies, turns up dead. Lena, a professor in her 30s who herself experienced firsthand the violence and unpredictability that simmer beneath the senator's wide appeal when they were student radicals together believes that Victor must be responsible for the woman's death, and feels compelled to compensate for the decade she has spent in silence about him. While Lena obsesses over her allegation, a wide cast of quirky characters most notably Freddy, the senator's gay brother; Olga, a radical former exile and stoner; and Christina, Victor's politically convenient wife and their own perspectives help fill in the senator's other crimes and shortcomings, as well as the circumstances of a changing nation in a changing world. Novey's storytelling is taut and her diction sharp, and though there are some unnecessary structural turns (scenes from a play Freddy is writing about his brother, newspaper reports), the book nevertheless has a striking sense of momentum. Add in a slight and intriguing sense of the supernatural, and the result is a provocative novel that has the feel of a thriller.
