“A clever and delightfully complicated debut…Each bend in this story raises more questions than are answered, in the best of ways and right to the end.”–San Francisco Chronicle Any student of narrative would agree that Anna Brisker, former star of the English department, should be on the brink of a brilliant academic career. But at twenty-nine, Anna is aimless, indolent, nearing the … Anna is aimless, indolent, nearing the eighth year of her PhD and unable to finish her dissertation, an intellectual history of inspiration. (No, the irony is not lost on her.)
Anna encounters a potential solution to her stasis in the form of Helen Langley, a magnetic, free-spirited woman who’’s the niece of the late, legendary writer Frederick Langley. Having published three classics in his youth, Freddy fell silent, and the literary world assumed he never wrote again. But Helen confides to Anna that he kept secret notebooks in his later years, notebooks that Helen might be willing to show Anna. As her fascination with Freddy (and Helen) blooms into obsession, Anna finds herself falling prey to fatal misreadings – of herself and others.
A sly and playful unpacking of the cult of the artist that excoriates academia with devilish glee, Talent brings the pressures of the 21st century to bear on the classic campus novel, weaving a twisty, brainy, wickedly hilarious story about our desperate need to believe that we understand…anything.
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year — LitHub, The Millions, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly
en might be willing to show Anna. As her fascination with Freddy (and Helen) blooms into obsession, Anna finds herself falling prey to fatal misreadings – of herself and others.
A sly and playful unpacking of the cult of the artist that excoriates academia with devilish glee, Talent brings the pressures of the 21st century to bear on the classic campus novel, weaving a twisty, brainy, wickedly hilarious story about our desperate need to believe that we understand…anything.
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year — LitHub, The Millions, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly
en might be willing to show Anna. As her fascination with Freddy (and Helen) blooms into obsession, Anna finds herself falling prey to fatal misreadings – of herself and others.
A sly and playful unpacking of the cult of the artist that excoriates academia with devilish glee, Talent brings the pressures of the 21st century to bear on the classic campus novel, weaving a twisty, brainy, wickedly hilarious story about our desperate need to believe that we understand…anything.
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year — LitHub, The Millions, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly
en might be willing to show Anna. As her fascination with Freddy (and Helen) blooms into obsession, Anna finds herself falling prey to fatal misreadings – of herself and others.
A sly and playful unpacking of the cult of the artist that excoriates academia with devilish glee, Talent brings the pressures of the 21st century to bear on the classic campus novel, weaving a twisty, brainy, wickedly hilarious story about our desperate need to believe that we understand…anything.
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year — LitHub, The Millions, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly
21st century to bear on the classic campus novel, weaving a twisty, brainy, wickedly hilarious story about our desperate need to believe that we understand…anything.
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year — LitHub, The Millions, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly
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In TALENT, Juliet Lapidos pulls off a double feat. First, it’s such a pleasure to think alongside the book’s narrator as she gets caught up in the ultimate literary caper. Second, the laconic brilliance of the (fictional) author at the heart of this caper is in itself enough to induce tooth-gnashing envy. I gobbled down this deliciously funny, sharp, and sincere inquiry into the factors underpinning our valuations of art, labor, ourselves and each other.
Talent is an intellectual delight woven around the intriguing and somewhat troubling New Testament parable of the talents, which would seem to teach that those who are given much will be blessed with more – and those who have been given little will pay for it.
Lapidos explores this theme through her main characters, Anna and Freddy.
Anna is a once promising but now thoroughly stalled graduate student in English literature, reduced to contemplating the nature of inspiration without doing much about it. Her family has begun to suggest she consider law school. Her advisor has suggested, with increasing urgency, that she find a case study sooner rather than later.
Frederick Langley, “Freddy”, is—or rather was– an author who wrote three successful books as a young man and then wrote precisely nothing until his death. Literary critics believe he suffered from writer’s block, or, as Anna puts it, he had been inspired, and then de-inspired.
These two unlikely characters are linked by Freddy’s niece, Helen, who grants Anna access to the holy grail that could save her thesis: two notebooks written by Freddy himself. Clues about Freddy’s life and motivations, revealed through fascinating bits and pieces of story ideas and observations in the notebooks, are interspersed with Anna’s own existential crisis. Lapidos weaves it all together into a surprising ending that reminds us that motives are open to a wide range of interpretations, any of which is likely to be wrong.
I loved the characters in this book and their insights into both the human condition and the nature of the creative process. Plus, I’m always in for a campus novel with a unique lead character, snark, and a bit of mystery.
Juliet Lapidos has created an unforgettable hero for our times in perpetual graduate student Anna Brisker. TALENT is as witty and lively a first novel as I’ve read in years.
Talent is a sly, bemused and original take on the idea of genius and fame, betrayal and family secrets, and ultimately, on freedom and imagination
Juliet Lapidos grabs a story type at least as old as Henry James’s The Aspern Papers and makes away with it into fast-moving, witty, literary adventure. With Pop-Tarts.
Juliet Lapidos has written a funny, brainy mystery novel that’s set inside a funny, brainy campus novel. Its heroines are a blocked academic who specializes in the history of inspiration, and an antique bookbinder who’s coming apart. Oh, and the title of it all is Talent, which now means “natural aptitude or skill,” but back in Greco-Roman days was a unit of money. Talent, then, is something you’re going to want, in every definition. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I’m hungry,” or, “The only problem with Sarah Silverman is that she’s not Nabokov,” then this is the book for you.
Steeped in literary intrigue and powered by a propulsive, agile wit, Talent is a taut existential thriller for the philosophical detective in each of us. In this gimlet-eyed, penetratingly comedic take on the campus novel, Juliet Lapidos lays bare the question that all academics ponder but few dare to actually ask: what use is knowing theory if we do not know ourselves?