The Wisdom of Perversity

January 5, 2015
In past books, author and screenwriter Yglesias dealt with media success (Hot Properties), parenting (Only Children), survival (Fearless), and love and loss (A Happy Marriage). But this latest work of fiction is probably his most nakedly autobiographical, mirroring his Slate article about being sexually molested at age eight. In 1966, Brian Moran and Jeff Mark are nine-year-old best friends living in Rego Park, Queens, who are both molested by Jeff’s middle-aged cousin, Richard Klein, an NBC vice president, who also molests Julie Rosen, another cousin of Jeff’s. All three children keep silent, and Brian and Jeff stop speaking to one another. Forty years later, when Klein is publicly accused of molestation, Brian, now a successful screenwriter, Jeff, a producer and director of Hollywood blockbusters, and Julie, an archivist for the New York Public Library, are forced to confront one another about what really happened when they were children and whether or not to break their decades-long silence. As the story moves toward its emotionally devastating climax, the author refuses to allow his characters anything approaching an easy resolution. Instead, he shows how a combination of guilt, fear, silence, and hidden agendas conspire to allow sexual predators to go unpunished. In the end, this novel dramatizes some dark truths about the continuing fallout of being a victim of abuse.

January 15, 2015
Three New York friends, in their childhood and adult selves, deal with a wily pedophile in an affecting novel that is big-screen lurid without being superficial or too slick. In his 10th novel, Yglesias (A Happy Marriage, 2009, etc.) presents the children's past trauma and their present-day reckoning in alternating chapters. Jeff's adult cousin, Richard Klein, has already molested the 8-year-old boy when his predatory attention turns to Jeff's best friend, Brian. The third victim is Julie, Jeff's young cousin, who is 11. It's hard to say whether the more devastating scene is the 23-page playlet in which Klein traps Julie on his lap in a room full of adults and children and forces the boys to watch him secretly molest her; or the paragraph in which Jeff makes an imaginary adventure of his desperate efforts to dispose of bloodied underwear without his mother's knowledge. As adults, Brian is single and a successful screenwriter, Julie is a library archivist and married with a teenage son, while Jeff, on his third marriage, is the top film director in the U.S. After years apart, the three reunite because Klein has just managed to elude exposure in another scandal and the trio is debating going public. Yglesias provides several revelations that ramp up the shock in an already awful tale and add a touch of Agatha Christie-like mystery. The author's experience with Hollywood as a producer and screenwriter (his own novel Fearless and other scripts) brings color and humor to the Brian and Jeff characters. Early in the book, a strange apologia for a character named Aries Wallinksi, who is clearly Roman Polanski (could this be a roman a clef in more ways than one?), previews many of the novel's themes and then reverberates late in the story with Julie's cry: "I want people to understand it isn't just priests and a couple loner weirdos." Yglesias of course exploits headlines and Hollywood to tell his tale but not without sensitivity. Most important, he shines a Kleig light where it may be most needed, into the parlors and playrooms where many Americans endure or perpetrate these nightmares.

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January 1, 2015
Brian and Jeff were best friends growing up in New York City in the 1960s, but their friendship ended when both boys, along with Jeff's cousin Julie, were molested repeatedly by an influential family friend. Now adults, both Brian and Jeff work in the film industry, but they've kept their relationship and the secret that destroyed it buried in their past. Then more recent victims come forward, accusing the same abuser of the same crime he committed against the friends decades earlier. The news is splashed across front pages nationwide, and the three reconnect to confront the guilt they feel for remaining silent so many years ago. They feel compelled to come forward, but it is too late for them to press charges, and while their reunion is cathartic and healing, they still fear the effect that such an admission will have on their very public lives. Although the story is uneven in places, Yglesias delivers a powerful message about victimization, healing, and empowerment in a novel that is as timely as it is poignant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)