Man of the Year

April 1, 2019
After being feted as Sag Harbor's Citizen of the Year, Dr. Robert Hart should be riding high. But everything he holds dear may be thrown into jeopardy when his son, Jonah, brings his college roommate, Nick, home for the summer. Walker's debut novel compellingly captures Robert's interior monologue, riddled with bitter doubts. Can he really trust his wife Elizabeth's fidelity? After all, they both cast off former spouses to marry each other. Can he trust his son's love? Indeed, why would Jonah love the father who abandoned him when he was just a child? Can he trust his houseguest, Nick, the young stud? Even his neighbors, the same townspeople who voted him Citizen of the Year, give Robert pause, for aren't they all phony posers just waiting for him and Elizabeth to show their true colors and commit adultery again? With a mother who died of ALS when he was just 14 and a father who died by suicide soon after, Nick has become self-sufficient, but he welcomes the chance to join the Hart family, if only for a while. Once Nick is ensconced in the guesthouse, Robert becomes convinced that their guest has designs on Elizabeth, and he embarks on a convoluted plan to keep Nick away from her, a plan that may well endanger his own career. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Jonah have their own troubles, including Elizabeth's conviction that the other women in town will never forgive her for her first broken marriage and Jonah's struggle to care for a previously absentee father. When Nick disappears, all that lurks beneath percolates up, triggering a few very surprising twists. A darkly beguiling summer mystery that exposes the shaky foundations of a complicated family.

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April 29, 2019
Physician Robert Hart, the narrator of Walker’s searing debut, has a beautiful wife, Elizabeth, who teaches at Stony Brook; he’s reconnecting with his college-age son, Jonah, who for once is spending the summer with him in Sag Harbor, N.Y., instead of with his ex-wife; and he has just won the township’s Citizen of the Year award. However, all is not well in the Hart home. Jonah’s college roommate Nick Carpenter, whose parents died when he was young, is staying in their guest house, and the cynical Robert suspects, with little evidence, that Nick and Elizabeth are having an affair. As a result, Robert takes highly questionable steps to keep the two separated. After a shocking event, Robert frantically begins covering his tracks, desperate to keep his life’s carefully constructed veneer of respectability intact. There are more than a few surprising twists in store in this smart, subtly menacing novel of suspense. Walker is a writer to watch. Agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary.

May 15, 2019
The green-eyed monster is never an easy emotion to handle, but it especially eviscerates insecure, middle-aged Dr. Robert Hart, newly crowned Sag Harbor's Man of the Year. No matter the reason for Hart's icy machinations that ultimately spiral horrifyingly out of control, he is convinced he's doing it all for his son, Jonah. After all, Hart's own father had once imparted this pearl of wisdom, That's fatherhood for you, Son. Turns the best of us into monsters. As Walker lifts the curtain on the tightly wound plot in her suspenseful and entertaining debut, it becomes increasingly apparent that the only person Hart is truly serving is his own vile self. The novel's thriller elements, set in the Gone Girl (2012) mold, lay bare the craven depths of depravity to which humans can sink as a cast of narrators, including three unreliable ones, spin and twist the plot between their manipulative fingers. The jolting roller-coaster ride serves double duty as a compelling case study in class and race privilege and the horrifying realities of purely self-serving, transactional relationships.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)