“Very funny and unexpected, a material response to our times, plush as velvet.” –Rachel Cusk
“A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel about all the bewildering ways we seek solace from the people and things that surround us.” – Jenny Offill
David Leavitt returns with his signature “coolly elegant prose” (O, The Oprah Magazine) to deliver a comedy of manners for the Trump era.
It is the Saturday after the 2016 presidential election, and in a plush weekend house in Connecticut, an intimate group of friends, New Yorkers all, has gathered to recover from what they consider the greatest political catastrophe of their lives. They have just sat down to tea when their hostess, Eva Lindquist, proposes a dare. Who among them would be willing to ask Siri how to assassinate Donald Trump? Liberal and like-minded-editors, writers, a decorator, a theater producer, and one financial guy, Eva's husband, Bruce-the friends have come to the countryside in the hope of restoring the bubble in which they have grown used to living. Yet with the exception of one brash and obnoxious book editor, none is willing to accept Eva's challenge.
Shelter in Place is a novel about house and home, furniture and rooms, safety and freedom and the invidious ways in which political upheaval can undermine even the most seemingly impregnable foundations. Eva is the novel's polestar, a woman who moves through her days accompanied by a roving, carefully curated salon. She's a generous hostess and more than a bit of a control freak, whose obsession with decorating allows Leavitt to treat us to a slyly comic look at the habitués and fetishes of the so-called shelter industry. Yet when, in her avidity to secure shelter for herself, she persuades Bruce to buy a grand if dilapidated apartment in Venice, she unwittingly sets off the chain of events that will propel him, for the first time, to venture outside the bubble and embark on a wholly unexpected love affair.
A comic portrait of the months immediately following the 2016 election, Shelter in Place is also a meditation on the unreliable appetites-for love, for power, for freedom-by which both our public and private lives are shaped.
Genre: Literary Fiction
“A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel about all the bewildering ways we seek solace from the people and things that surround us.” – Jenny Offill
David Leavitt returns with his signature “coolly elegant prose” (O, The Oprah Magazine) to deliver a comedy of manners for the Trump era.
It is the Saturday after the 2016 presidential election, and in a plush weekend house in Connecticut, an intimate group of friends, New Yorkers all, has gathered to recover from what they consider the greatest political catastrophe of their lives. They have just sat down to tea when their hostess, Eva Lindquist, proposes a dare. Who among them would be willing to ask Siri how to assassinate Donald Trump? Liberal and like-minded-editors, writers, a decorator, a theater producer, and one financial guy, Eva's husband, Bruce-the friends have come to the countryside in the hope of restoring the bubble in which they have grown used to living. Yet with the exception of one brash and obnoxious book editor, none is willing to accept Eva's challenge.
Shelter in Place is a novel about house and home, furniture and rooms, safety and freedom and the invidious ways in which political upheaval can undermine even the most seemingly impregnable foundations. Eva is the novel's polestar, a woman who moves through her days accompanied by a roving, carefully curated salon. She's a generous hostess and more than a bit of a control freak, whose obsession with decorating allows Leavitt to treat us to a slyly comic look at the habitués and fetishes of the so-called shelter industry. Yet when, in her avidity to secure shelter for herself, she persuades Bruce to buy a grand if dilapidated apartment in Venice, she unwittingly sets off the chain of events that will propel him, for the first time, to venture outside the bubble and embark on a wholly unexpected love affair.
A comic portrait of the months immediately following the 2016 election, Shelter in Place is also a meditation on the unreliable appetites-for love, for power, for freedom-by which both our public and private lives are shaped.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Shelter in Place is a poignant, funny, wonderful novel, a pleasure and a joy." - Donald Antrim
"Very funny and unexpected, a material response to our times, plush as velvet." - Rachel Cusk
"A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel about all the bewildering ways we seek solace from the people and things that surround us." - Jenny Offill
"I've long been a fan of David Leavitt's work, for its range, its depth, its smarts and its humour. He is a phenomenal and prescient writer." - Justin Torres
"Leavitt is a master stylist ... An important writer. He is the rarest of all birds - a man of letters." - Edmund White
"David Leavitt is a masterful writer and his dialogue, his innate sense of the rhythm of how people talk to each other, both in public and in private, is absolutely incredible. It's impossible not to be pulled into this novel, to see the epicentre of chaos in the lives of these characters, and listen to them try to talk themselves into a new imagining of the world. With precision and humour, Leavitt has created something amazing." - Kevin Wilson
"Very funny and unexpected, a material response to our times, plush as velvet." - Rachel Cusk
"A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel about all the bewildering ways we seek solace from the people and things that surround us." - Jenny Offill
"I've long been a fan of David Leavitt's work, for its range, its depth, its smarts and its humour. He is a phenomenal and prescient writer." - Justin Torres
"Leavitt is a master stylist ... An important writer. He is the rarest of all birds - a man of letters." - Edmund White
"David Leavitt is a masterful writer and his dialogue, his innate sense of the rhythm of how people talk to each other, both in public and in private, is absolutely incredible. It's impossible not to be pulled into this novel, to see the epicentre of chaos in the lives of these characters, and listen to them try to talk themselves into a new imagining of the world. With precision and humour, Leavitt has created something amazing." - Kevin Wilson
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for David Leavitt's Shelter in Place