The Last Book Party

Karen Dukess sets her debut in the summer of 1987 on Cape Cod, in the orbit of a famous older writer and his wife. The narrator is Eve, a twenty-five year old assistant at a New York publishing house who wants to be taken seriously as a writer herself.

The summer pulls her into the writer’s world. Cocktail parties, casual cruelties, the kind of literary scene where people quote each other and watch who quotes whom back.

Dukess worked in publishing for a long time before she wrote this, and the inside-the-machine details ring true. The setting is specific enough that readers familiar with Wellfleet and Truro will recognize it.

It’s a quiet book. Not much explodes. The pleasure is in watching Eve figure out what she actually wants, and how much of what she thought she wanted was someone else’s idea.