White Fur

May 8, 2017
Set in the late 1980s, Libaire’s novel is an erotic and gritty reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet. When straitlaced Yale student Jamey Hyde meets rough-around-the-edges Elise Perez, the two engage in a hot and heavy relationship that transcends divisions of background and class. At the end of his junior year, Jamey takes a summer internship in New York City and invites Elise to come with him. Despite the numerous social and economic barriers keeping the two apart, their bond intensifies, eventually pushing Jamey to disown his family, sign away his inheritance, and drop out of school before the start of his senior year. With no concrete plans for the future, the two embrace their new life in Manhattan’s East Village, fighting internal and external battles along the way. Major plot points leave the reader skeptical, but the novel benefits from the author’s deft use of language. Writing with all the senses, Libaire demonstrates an ability to evoke vivid moods and places, drawing a stark and realistic depiction of ’80s Manhattan. She also succeeds at giving equal weight and attention to both her protagonists, elegantly toggling between their perspectives. The most lively, memorable, and convincing character in the novel is the setting itself.

March 15, 2017
Two barely-20-somethings from opposite sides of the tracks fall in frantic love amid the lush grit of New York City in the 1980s in Libaire's (Here Kitty Kitty, 2004) new novel.For three months, Elise Perez has been living in a cheerfully dilapidated apartment in New Haven after her roommate (then a stranger) found her sleeping in his car. Next door, Yale junior Jamey Hyde, beautiful, wealthy, from a family of note, is rapidly veering off his proscribed path. She's a high school dropout who ran away from public housing in Bridgeport: half white, half Puerto Rican, -not lost and not found, not incarcerated, not beautiful and not ugly and not ordinary.- He is her opposite: born and bred in New York City, son of a starlet and an investment banker (acrimoniously divorced), polished and well-mannered, with a job at his father's namesake firm preordained upon graduation. And against the warnings of everyone around them, they are entranced by each other. Their relationship is obsessive and charged and not entirely pleasant, but their hunger is unstoppable: -She can often tell something's wrong, since after sex he usually hates her and wants her to disappear or die,- Libaire writes. -But then he comes back the next night, or the night after, and that's all that matters.- Jamey brings Elise with him to New York for the summer--he has an internship at Sotheby's--and then for longer, living together in passionate free fall, severing ties to the lives they knew before. Jamey is willing to sacrifice everything he came from for love--but it's a choice that comes at grave cost. For the most part, Libaire manages to rescue her somewhat familiar characters from the jaws of cliche, but the real strength of the novel is its Technicolor atmosphere: Libaire's New York is a glittering whirlwind, raw and sweaty and intoxicating. A page-turning whirlwind steeped in pain and hope.

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Starred review from May 1, 2017

Libaire's (Here Kitty Kitty) second novel is a tale of star-crossed lovers that spans 1986-87. Opening first in New Haven, CT, then moving to New York City, and, finally, ending in Wyoming, the book chronicles the love affair between Jamey Hyde, son of a blue blood financier and an up-from-nothing starlet (acrimoniously divorced), and Elise Perez, a high school dropout and daughter of a single mother from the Bridgeport, CT, projects. They first meet when they are living next door to each other in New Haven; Jamey is a junior at Yale, and Elise is scraping by on her job at a pet store. What starts out as an obsessive affair turns into a ferocious love Jamey is willing to give up everything to pursue. VERDICT Intense and sensual with vivid, muscular writing, the story line gains page-turning momentum as it invokes the highs and lows of the 1980s. Recommended for readers of contemporary American literary fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/16.]--Nancy H. Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT

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