November 4, 2024
In this hilarious farce from Rudnick (Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style), a destination wedding goes extravagantly awry. Tech billionaire Trone Meston is set to marry his flight attendant fiancé, Linda Kleinschmidt, on Artemis Island, a private retreat he owns off the coast of Maine. Among the guests are Linda’s bodybuilder ex-husband, Sean Manginaro, a former TV star who was “bodysurfing an ocean of nubile, pre-lubed, equally libidinous women” before he met Linda, and who misses the stability she provided. Also invited is Isabelle McNally, a sensitivity reader for a publishing company owned by Trone. She’s followed to the island by literary wunderkind Tremble Woodspill, whose editor, Rob Barnett, lost his job after rejecting notes from Isabelle on Tremble’s novel. Other interlopers include Rob’s friend Paolo, who’s attempting to evade a stalker he met on a gay dating app. As the weekend progresses, the subplots intersect in delightful fashion. Sean grows convinced Linda wants him back, Isabelle tries to get Trone for herself, and Tremble attempts to persuade Isabelle to help Rob get rehired. It’s all carried along by Rudnick’s delicious wit and keen eye for detail (“It’s Ralph Lauren Prairie meets Embassy Suites in Akron,” Paolo says of the lobby in Alchemy Hall, the island’s estate and conference center). Readers will relish this comedy of errors. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Aevitas Creative Management.
Starred review from January 1, 2025
As Carl Hiaasen's novels do for Florida, Rudnick's (Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style) work does for the New York region. Rob, a book editor mourning the death of his husband, loses his job. He then accompanies Sean, his longtime trainer, to the private-island wedding of Sean's ex-wife and a tech billionaire. Teeming with eccentric characters and too many plot points, this work is nevertheless, a very fun read. Rudnick's screenwriting abilities (he penned 1997's In & Out) show through in his beautifully weird dialogue. Most of the characters' backstories are absurd, but still lived-in and fully imagined. The book alternates between the perspectives of each character, with a focus on the friendship between Rob and Sean. Rudnick pokes fun at modern technology and late-stage capitalism, portraying Trone (the billionaire who is marrying Sean's ex) as a kind of unholy amalgamation of the various real tech billionaires of today. VERDICT In the end, the plot does not matter, really; what makes Rudnick's book so memorable are the well-drawn friendships among characters, their allegiance to one another, and a surprisingly touching reflection on love, trust, and the passage of time.--Julie Feighery
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Starred review from February 1, 2025
Thanks to a "sensitivity associate," Rob Barnett, a gay white guy about to turn 60, is fired from his job as an editor for championing a politically incorrect (to put it mildly) book by "an exciting, highly original young author named Tremble Woodspill (her real name)." It's been a year and two days since Rob's husband Jake died of ALS. In the meantime, Rob's trainer, Sean, has persuaded Rob to go with him to Maine to attend his ex-wife's marriage to Trone Meston, the third richest man in the world. Rob's best friend Paolo joins them, trying to escape a stalker. And Tremble is headed to Maine, too, to save Rob . . . and her book! Soon, some surprising others show up as well to keep the plot pot boiling. Rudnick's latest is a page-turning doozy filled with laugh-out-loud moments ("Being rich is so much work, but I bet there's okay food.") Playwright and author Rudnick (Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, 2023) is famously witty and clever--on display here to readers' great delight. There isn't a dull moment to be found in this book that proves the sometimes-undervalued importance of humor in literature.
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Starred review from March 15, 2025
A very 21st-century wedding brings together a thoroughly modern cast of characters...and a nice, old-school gay book editor. Whatever modern trend has got you down--political correctness, health and wellness, device madness, you name it--Rudnick skewers it in his latest comedy of manners. At its center is a lovely man named Rob who has recently lost his longtime partner to ALS. His best remaining friend is a personal trainer/action movie actor named Sean, whose flight attendant ex-wife, Linda, is about to marry a kinder, gentler Zuckerberg/Musk master-of-the-universe-type named Trone Meston, whose devices have completely taken over "life as we fucking know it," which also happens to be the title of a debut novel Rob has just gotten fired over, thanks to a young "sensitivity associate" named Isabelle McNally. There are a slew of hilarious characters and connections, remarkably easy to keep straight once you're into it but not to be further detailed here. The whole gang, it turns out, is headed to Maine for Trone and Linda's wedding, which will also be the product reveal of the most revolutionary device Trone has ever introduced. A few examples of the bacchanalia that are Rudnick's sentences: "Isabelle sexually experimented with a Filipina who identified as a warrior goddess, a queer man who taught her about weaving wildflower penis wreaths, and a three-person collective dedicated to having sex with food to vanquish the patriarchal miasma long associated with eclairs and body shaming." Elsewhere: "As Linda told a friend, 'It was like sex with the friendliest robot, that only wanted to make me come and then fill out a response card. It was great because it wasn't really like sex, it was like--eating one of those astronaut meals from a sealed foil pouch and realizing it really did taste just like filet mignon.'" The sentences that aren't about sex are just as good. With regard to the names Bridger and Morrow, the boy-and-girl twins of Sean and Linda: Their names "sounded like a wine cooler, a law firm on a soap opera, or animated bunnies in a Disney film." It's the little thingsand the big things. Rudnick kills. Packed with fun in every sentence, this book is the cure for your bad mood.
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