Who is Maud Dixon?
A Novel
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4.1 • 467 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Part Patricia Highsmith, part All About Eve and pure fun.”―Maria Semple
Florence Darrow has always felt she was destined for greatness, but after a disastrous affair with her married boss, she starts to doubt herself. All that changes when she sets off for Morocco with her new boss, the celebrated but reclusive author Maud Dixon. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence begins to feel she’s leading the sort of interesting, cosmopolitan life she deserves.
But when she wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night—and no sign of Maud—a dangerous idea begins to take form. . .
A Best Book of the Year: New York Times, NPR, New York Post, Entertainment Weekly, CrimeReads
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
If you’ve ever wondered how far a fame-hungry author will go, Alexandra Andrews has a terrifying story for you. Young Florence Darrow abandoned her Podunk life in Florida, hoping to break into New York’s exclusive literary scene. But instead of becoming the hot new writer, Florence ends up working for icy celebrity author Helen Wilcox, who writes huge bestsellers under the pen name Maud Dixon. The bad news? Seems that Helen is a sociopath. The good news? So is Florence. This nerve-racking pageturner had us second-guessing everyone and everything from one chapter to the next. Who Is Maud Dixon? reads like a 21st-century update of Patricia Highsmith’s globe-trotting, deliciously venomous thrillers about people who will stop at nothing to get what they want.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When aspiring novelist Florence Darrow, the protagonist of Andrews's devilishly plotted debut, gets fired from her dogsbody job at a Manhattan publishing house, she faces the prospect that she might not be destined for greatness after all. Then fate intervenes an offer to become the live-in writing assistant to a literary supernova who uses the pseudonym Maud Dixon. Initially, all goes swimmingly as Florence's charismatic new boss real name Helen Wilcox, and at 32 only a few years her senior seems keen on mentoring Florence. But when the pair embark on a research trip to Morocco, things become considerably more complicated. Especially after Florence wakes up in the hospital following a car crash to find no trace of Helen, but instead a gendarme insistent that she is in fact Helen, an understandable error given the name on the car rental paperwork as well as Helen's soggy ID. And with that the game truly is afoot as Florence scrambles to figure out the nature of what will prove to be Helen's fiendish master plot, barreling full-speed towards a breathtaking series of Highsmith-style twists and a stunning conclusion. This darkly comic take on contemporary publishing may well leave readers asking, "Who is Alexandra Andrews?"
Customer Reviews
Twisty and fun!
Florence is an average copywriter in a big publishing company when she is suddenly fired after an affair with a married editor. She gets a prestigious and secretive job as an assistant to an anonymous author. But she soon realizes that Maud isn’t who she says she is, but she idolizes her in a twisted way. This book has a similar vibe to that of Talented Mr. Ripley. Fun and twisty ending. 4/5⭐️
Who is Maud?
Whoa...so creepy.
Ugh.
What a slog.