The Afterlife of Emerson Tang

February 11, 2013
Money can’t buy happiness, but can it buy aesthetic satisfaction, or restore a shattered past? Automobile journalist Champa’s first novel places a 1953 Beacon, a fictional classic car, at the center of a war of acquisition. Its owner, wealthy young art collector Emerson Tang, is near death, and has recruited his devoted archivist, Beth Corvid, to manage his healthcare and estate. He turns down an offer for the Beacon from Hélène Moreau, an avant-garde artist who used cars to create her famous ‘50s-era Speed paintings, but in the process discovers that the Beacon’s engine has somehow been replaced. As he and Beth begin a race to restore the car to its original state, their relationship emerges as the heart of the book, revealing two deeply private people who find common ground in each other’s driving passions. More than from the Beacon’s fate, suspense arises from the question of whether Beth, whose attachment to Emerson has been central to her adult life, can create a future for herself after his death. While Emerson and Hélène’s dramatic, slowly revealed motivations for possessing the car make for compelling conflict, it’s Beth’s unspoken, rigorous devotion that elevates Champa’s story. Agent: William Clark, William Clark Associates.

January 15, 2013
A journalist specializing in auto design, Champa debuts with a novel about a classic car and the symbolism it holds for a range of characters. Thirty-something Beth Corvid was originally hired to be the archivist of a photography collection owned by Emerson Tang, a half-Chinese/half-WASP multimillionaire. Only a few years older than Beth, Emerson is now dying of a never named incurable disease, and while there is no romance between them, there is love and devotion, so Emerson has put her in charge of his health care and his life in general. When the aging French artist Helene Moreau, famous for her futurist "Speed" paintings created by race car tires during the 1950s, approaches Emerson to buy his 1954 Beacon, Beth is surprised to find out he has purchased the car without her knowledge. Helene wants the car, or specifically its engine, to jump-start her creativity, which has dissipated. Helene befriends Beth, but Beth doesn't trust her motives or her sincerity. When it becomes clear that the chassis to Emerson's Beacon is missing its original engine, Emerson suspects Helene. He sends Beth to search for clues to its whereabouts in Germany, where the Beacon line is about to be relaunched. There, she meets Helene's former lover with whom she once raced in the Beacon. She also meets Miguel Beacon, whose grandfather founded the original Beacon manufacturing company. Miguel agrees to help her find the engine. Soon, the four characters' lives are intersecting if not intertwining as the search for the engine moves to California. Meanwhile, Emerson's health is breaking down rapidly, and Beth, whose own near-death experience as a small child has left her afraid to commit fully to life, is finding herself increasingly attracted to Miguel. By the ending, in which a host of coincidences explain the convoluted plot, each of the characters has realized what the car represents in his/her life. Only race car aficionados may be willing to wade through the philosophic pretensions and flat prose.

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March 1, 2013
A vintage 1954 Beacon car is the axis around which four characters revolve, trying to accept and resolve each of their sorrows in Champa's vividly detailed debut. Dying at 33, Emerson Tang Webster is the wealthy son of an established old-money family. His possession of the prized Beacon is first a point of pride, then consternation as events reveal that its safekeeping in a garage has been breached. His personal assistant and archivist, watchful narrator Beth Corvid, attempts to parse everyone's lives into manageable pieces as she weaves the tale of mystery and connection. Along the way, Beth makes surprising discoveries while also slowly revealing her own secrets. French painter H'l'ne Moreau wants the car at any cost. Her near-manic desperation is balanced by a sometimes-unexpected clarity. Then there is Miguel Beacon, grandson of the man who started the now-defunct Beacon car empire. His story may be the most complex of all in this intellectual yet deeply human examination of what it means to live as well as to die.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)