A Ladder to the Sky

Starred review from September 10, 2018
This evocative saga from Boyne (The Heart’s Invisible Furies) presents the Machiavellian literary success of Maurice Swift. In the late 1980s, Swift is an aspiring writer working as a waiter in West Berlin when he meets acclaimed author Erich Ackermann. Despite Swift’s inexperience, Ackermann is besotted by Swift’s beauty and coy sycophancy and employs him as his assistant. In a fruitless effort to win Swift’s affections, Ackermann entrusts him with his darkest secret: in 1939, information he gave SS officers led to the deaths of five people. Swift then uses Ackermann’s stories as the basis of a commercially successful novel, and to incriminate Ackermann. But Ackermann is just his first victim, and for the next 30 years, Swift’s ruthlessness flourishes as he manipulates others’ sexual desires and talents to further his literary career. Swift’s story spans the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day as his career’s demise is related from the perspectives of Ackermann; a fictionalized Gore Vidal; Swift’s wife, novelist Edith Camberley; and finally Swift himself. In his relentless pursuit of literary canonization, despite creative impotence, Swift is an enthralling yet profoundly disturbing protagonist. Boyne’s fast-paced, white-knuckle plot, accompanied by delightfully sardonic commentary on the ego, insecurities, and pitfalls of those involved in the literary world, makes for a truly engrossing experience. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment.

Listeners are in for a masterfully written story, powerfully performed. Handsome, manipulative, ambitious Maurice Swift is set on becoming a famous novelist and a father--no matter what it takes. The narration is so arresting that one feels like a voyeur while hearing Maurice manipulate, through seduction, his first victim, aging author Erich Ackermann. From there, listeners observe Maurice's life and career by hearing from Ackermann; Maurice's wife, Edith; his son; a literary biographer; and others, including Gore Vidal. The trio of narrators does an exceptional job of voicing Maurice--young and old, sober and drunk--and his victims--the innocent and the ruthless. Listeners will find themselves challenged by the question of who owns story ideas and left with a rather grim view of the publishing world. E.Q. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine