Blog Tour: ‘The Vixen’ by Francine Prose

Thanks to Random Things Tours and Harper for inviting me on this blog tour and for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was published on 5th August.

From the Publisher:

The year is 1953, and Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard graduate, has landed an editorial role at a distinguished New York City publisher. Thrust into a glittering world of martini lunches, exclusive literary salons, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, Simon finds himself a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family in Coney Island. But Simon’s first assignment—editing The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a potboiler intended to shore up the firm’s failing finances—makes him question the cost of admission. Because Simon has a secret that, at the height of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings, he cannot reveal: his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenberg’s. Indeed, his parents mourn Ethel’s death.

THE VIXEN is the latest novel from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose. “A rollicking trickster of a novel, wondrously funny and wickedly addictive,” lauds Maria Semple, Simon’s dilemma grows thornier when he meets The Vixen’s author, the beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. The assignment leads him in strange and sinister directions, his naivety often exploited by bad actors and power players.  As deception abounds, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simon’s control, he must face what he’s lost by exchanging the safety of his parents’ apartment for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. Gradually Simon realizes that the people around him are not what they seem, that everyone is keeping secrets, that ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot – and yet, that these crises may steer him toward a brighter future. 

THE VIXEN rewards its reader with an eminently satisfying conclusion. It is the sort of work most needed right now. At once domestic and political, contemporary and historic, funny and heart-breaking, the novel illuminates a period of history with eerily striking similarities to the current moment. Meanwhile it asks timeless questions: How do we balance ambition and conscience? What do social mobility and cultural assimilation require us to sacrifice? How do we develop an authentic self, discover a vocation, and learn to live with the mysteries of life and loss?

Deeply researched, with such broad considerations and hefty socio-political themes, a work of this sort might find itself weighed down by its own ideas. But in Prose’s able hands, THE VIXEN is dazzling and energetic. She opts, instead, for something at once more sly and more accessible, using the historical premise as a vehicle to tell a universally resonant story of love, self-discovery, and family. Like those accused of Communism across America in the 1950s, Simon Putnam is after, most of all, the right to define himself.

My Review:

It was the setting that drew me to this book – 1950s New York sounded impossibly glamorous, even if our central character grew up in the less salubrious Coney Island in the shadow of the amusement park. Throw in the world of publishing and I’m in!

This is the story of Simon Putnam, the Harvard graduate whose education has not prepared him at all for real life. Nepotism lands him a publishing job, but it soon becomes clear that Simon is very much out of his depth. He finds the book he has been given to edit morally dubious – it is capitalising on the deaths of the Rosenbergs while being heralded as the book that will change the fortunes of the struggling publishing house.

When Simon meets (and becomes involved in a relationship of sorts) with the novel’s author, Anya, he struggles even more with the morals of what he is being asked to do – especially as he knows that his parents would be horrified with his choices. However, this turns out to be merely the start of his troubles…

Simon is an engaging and quite relatable narrator. All at once, we see the dilemmas he faces – the desire to do right by his parents, his lust for Anya, his ambitions and attempt at professionalism. He really is caught in an impossible situation whereby the ‘right’ (moral) course of action runs counter to everything else – and would lose him his job and whatever he has going with Anya. His perspective is presented with humour and his narrative voice is lively.

This novel is really at its best when it explores the morality of Simon’s decisions in detail. Indeed, his tiptoeing around the situation is very credible and engaging. I found that I enjoyed this a lot more than the later parts of the novel which seemed (to me) a bit harder to believe.

The setting was hugely appealing for me. Although I didn’t know much about the Rosenberg trial and execution, I loved that this novel sheds light on this shocking and brutal episode in America’s history. The glamorous world of New York’s publishing scene in the 1950s is also well-presented. On the one hand there is decadence and glitz, but on the other we see Simon desperately calculating what he can afford to buy on restaurant menus.

Overall, I’d say this is a hugely readable and enjoyable novel that plays around with ideas of morality – not only personal, but also the moral choices made by the government of a nation. It’s incredibly well-researched, beautifully written and draws the reader into Simon’s world with ease. If you wanted to spend a few hours in 1950s New York, this would be a great choice for you!

About the Author:

Francine Prose is the author of twenty-one works of fiction including, the highly acclaimed Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honours, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Centre, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.