A rollicking trickster of a novel, wondrously funny and wickedly addictive.” — Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette
“Can a novel be wildly intelligent, deeply compassionate, politically astute and utterly absorbing? In her dazzling new novel Francine Prose accomplishes all of this, and more, as she explores the fate of the Rosenbergs and the travails of an editorial assistant new to both publishing and love. The Vixen is irresistible.” — Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field
“In an enthralling new novel, Francine Prose, a maestro storyteller, interrogates the murky symbiotic relationship between history and individuals: Is it the senselessness of history that undermines and rewrites each person's life story, or, is it a collection of cruelties from individuals that change the course of history? Equally suspenseful and philosophical, The Vixen is both a page tuner set in an era of espionage, conspiracy and mistrust, and an exploration of one of the sustaining factors of civilization that also has to sustain perennial attack from politics and history: human decency.” — Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go
“Prose is a powerhouse. The Vixen will fascinate and complicate the histories that haunt our present moments. Like Coney Island’s Cyclone, this story tumbles and tangles a reader’s grip of reality. It’s told with the heart, humor and daring of a true artist. Prose’s Vixen is a triumph and a trip through the solid magic that books make real.” — Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot
“Only a writer as deft and ingenious as Francine Prose could tell us the story of the American present, slantwise, through the McCarthy past. A bright Coney Island Jew tries to rise in the gin-soaked world of WASP publishing, where his job is to mash the tragedy of the Rosenberg executions into pulp. I relished every page of this hilarious, cunning and utterly engrossing novel, and came away with a startling recognition of the place we now call home.” — Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia and New People
"Combining elements of mystery and romance, Prose’s novel is a sly indictment of Cold War paranoia." — The New Yorker
“No one states problems more correctly, more astutely, more amusingly and more uncomfortably than Francine Prose . . . Her insights, the subtle ones and the two-by-fours, make me shake my head in despair, in surprise, in heartfelt agreement. The gift of her work to a reader is to create for us what she creates for her protagonist: the subtle unfolding, the moment-by-moment process of discovery as we read and change, from not knowing and even not wanting to know or care, to seeing what we had not seen and finding our way to the light of the ending.” — New York Times Book Review
“A pleasingly intricate plot that hinges, inevitably, on lies and betrayal, both personal and political. There are spies here, and traitors. But in the richly textured place and time that Ms. Prose portrays with her usual skill, there are few clear distinctions.” — Wall Street Journal
"Prose holds up a mirror to a fractured culture in this dazzling take on America's tendency to persecute, then lionize, its most subversive figures. . . . This is Prose at the top of her game." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Depending on the light, it’s either a very funny serious story or a very serious funny story. But no matter how you turn it, The Vixen offers an illuminating reflection on the slippery nature of truth in America, then and now." — Washington Post
“Prose is a master of language, and her captivating words are all the more striking in contrast to the novel’s intentional profanity. Good fiction entertains and asks questions, gesturing to truths beyond the novel itself. The Vixen does just that, with an extra note of fun.” — BookPage (starred review)
“Like a fable, the story is animated by the tug-of-war between principle and personal ambition. Prose has crafted an inspired work of fiction that, while staying within a realistic framework, does for an invented New York publishing house what Ira Levin did for a certain Manhattan apartment building in Rosemary's Baby .” — Shelf Awareness
"I know book people are wont to throw around the phrase “compulsively readable,” but in the case of Francine Prose’s The Vixen , I can’t help myself. I read it with compulsion . . . Come for the propulsive mystery and sentence-level tautness, stay for the 1950s publishing mise-en-scène." — Literary Hub (38 Novels You Need to Read This Summer)
“Prose ingeniously takes on publishing, the fallout of WWII, and McCarthyism in a gloriously astute, skewering, and hilarious bildungsroman . . . Mordant, incisive, and tenderhearted, Prose presents an intricately realized tale of a treacherous, democracy-threatening time of lies, demagoguery, and prejudice that is as wildly exhilarating as the Cyclone, Simon’s beloved Coney Island roller coaster. ” — Booklist (starred review)
"The Vixen is a deeply and unexpectedly funny book. Prose, with her signature brand of humor, is arguably the only person who could have written this book well." — Shondaland.com
“Prose’s exuberant, lighthearted novel immerses the reader in 1950s ambience, yet it’s full of winks and nods to the current political climate. Simon, our overheated narrator, pulls us along as he stumbles into Cold War intrigue, and we’re never sure which way the plot will turn until literally the last sentence. What a delightful read!” — Library Journal
"Smart, assured fiction from a master storyteller and thoughtful social commentator." — Kirkus Reviews
"Francine Prose has brilliantly used the Rosenbergs’ story as the foundation for a captivating coming-of-age tale about ambition, love, family loyalty, truth and lies, and the publishing business. . . . There are many moments when one can imagine Philip Roth or Joseph Heller smiling at Prose’s ingenuity and verve. She long ago secured her literary reputation, and The Vixen will only serve to burnish it." — Bookreporter.com
"The Vixen is deeply chilling but also laugh-out-loud funny." — Financial Times (Best Books of 2021: Fiction)
"Depending on the light, it’s either a very funny serious story or a very serious funny story. But no matter how you turn it, The Vixen offers an illuminating reflection on the slippery nature of truth in America, then and now."
Only a writer as deft and ingenious as Francine Prose could tell us the story of the American present, slantwise, through the McCarthy past. A bright Coney Island Jew tries to rise in the gin-soaked world of WASP publishing, where his job is to mash the tragedy of the Rosenberg executions into pulp. I relished every page of this hilarious, cunning and utterly engrossing novel, and came away with a startling recognition of the place we now call home.
"Combining elements of mystery and romance, Prose’s novel is a sly indictment of Cold War paranoia."
A pleasingly intricate plot that hinges, inevitably, on lies and betrayal, both personal and political. There are spies here, and traitors. But in the richly textured place and time that Ms. Prose portrays with her usual skill, there are few clear distinctions.
Prose is a powerhouse. The Vixen will fascinate and complicate the histories that haunt our present moments. Like Coney Island’s Cyclone, this story tumbles and tangles a reader’s grip of reality. It’s told with the heart, humor and daring of a true artist. Prose’s Vixen is a triumph and a trip through the solid magic that books make real.
A rollicking trickster of a novel, wondrously funny and wickedly addictive.
In an enthralling new novel, Francine Prose, a maestro storyteller, interrogates the murky symbiotic relationship between history and individuals: Is it the senselessness of history that undermines and rewrites each person's life story, or, is it a collection of cruelties from individuals that change the course of history? Equally suspenseful and philosophical, The Vixen is both a page tuner set in an era of espionage, conspiracy and mistrust, and an exploration of one of the sustaining factors of civilization that also has to sustain perennial attack from politics and history: human decency.
Can a novel be wildly intelligent, deeply compassionate, politically astute and utterly absorbing? In her dazzling new novel Francine Prose accomplishes all of this, and more, as she explores the fate of the Rosenbergs and the travails of an editorial assistant new to both publishing and love. The Vixen is irresistible.
No one states problems more correctly, more astutely, more amusingly and more uncomfortably than Francine Prose . . . Her insights, the subtle ones and the two-by-fours, make me shake my head in despair, in surprise, in heartfelt agreement. The gift of her work to a reader is to create for us what she creates for her protagonist: the subtle unfolding, the moment-by-moment process of discovery as we read and change, from not knowing and even not wanting to know or care, to seeing what we had not seen and finding our way to the light of the ending.
New York Times Book Review
"Depending on the light, it’s either a very funny serious story or a very serious funny story. But no matter how you turn it, The Vixen offers an illuminating reflection on the slippery nature of truth in America, then and now."
"Combining elements of mystery and romance, Prose’s novel is a sly indictment of Cold War paranoia."
A pleasingly intricate plot that hinges, inevitably, on lies and betrayal, both personal and political. There are spies here, and traitors. But in the richly textured place and time that Ms. Prose portrays with her usual skill, there are few clear distinctions.
"I know book people are wont to throw around the phrase “compulsively readable,” but in the case of Francine Prose’s The Vixen , I can’t help myself. I read it with compulsion . . . Come for the propulsive mystery and sentence-level tautness, stay for the 1950s publishing mise-en-scène."
Literary Hub (38 Novels You Need to Read This Summer)
"Francine Prose has brilliantly used the Rosenbergs’ story as the foundation for a captivating coming-of-age tale about ambition, love, family loyalty, truth and lies, and the publishing business. . . . There are many moments when one can imagine Philip Roth or Joseph Heller smiling at Prose’s ingenuity and verve. She long ago secured her literary reputation, and The Vixen will only serve to burnish it."
Prose is a master of language, and her captivating words are all the more striking in contrast to the novel’s intentional profanity. Good fiction entertains and asks questions, gesturing to truths beyond the novel itself. The Vixen does just that, with an extra note of fun.
BookPage (starred review)
"The Vixen is a deeply and unexpectedly funny book. Prose, with her signature brand of humor, is arguably the only person who could have written this book well."
Prose ingeniously takes on publishing, the fallout of WWII, and McCarthyism in a gloriously astute, skewering, and hilarious bildungsroman . . . Mordant, incisive, and tenderhearted, Prose presents an intricately realized tale of a treacherous, democracy-threatening time of lies, demagoguery, and prejudice that is as wildly exhilarating as the Cyclone, Simon’s beloved Coney Island roller coaster.
Booklist (starred review)
Like a fable, the story is animated by the tug-of-war between principle and personal ambition. Prose has crafted an inspired work of fiction that, while staying within a realistic framework, does for an invented New York publishing house what Ira Levin did for a certain Manhattan apartment building in Rosemary's Baby .
★ 04/12/2021
Prose (Mister Monkey ) holds up a mirror to a fractured culture in this dazzling take on America's tendency to persecute, then lionize, its most subversive figures. In 1953, recent Harvard graduate Simon Putnam watches news of the Rosenberg execution on television with his parents in Brooklyn. Though Simon has profited from a Puritan-sounding name—and hopes to profit further—he's from a liberal Jewish family; his mother attended the same high school as Ethel Rosenberg (and even keeps a small shrine to her in their apartment). It's the height of the Red Scare, when "anyone could be accused" and "everyone was afraid." Flash forward a year, and Simon's literary critic uncle has landed him a job as junior editor at a prestigious but financially unstable publisher. When its founder, Warren Landry, gives Simon his first novel to edit, Simon is aghast to learn the project is a thinly veiled bodice ripper about the Rosenberg trial. It's an unusual book for the publisher, but Landry, a WWII veteran who once ran psyops for the OSS, lays out the stakes: the publisher needs a win, and a pulp yarn that further vilifies the Rosenbergs and Communism seems like just the thing. Why a junior editor would be given such an important task is a slow-burn mystery that propels readers through Prose's recreation of 1950s paranoia, complete with an appearance from Senator Joseph McCarthy's minion and future Trump mentor Roy Cohn. Sidelong commentary on Landry's sexual predation, shot through a lens informed by the #MeToo era, adds further resonance. This is Prose at the top of her game. (June)
Can a novel be wildly intelligent, deeply compassionate, politically astute and utterly absorbing? In her dazzling new novel Francine Prose accomplishes all of this, and more, as she explores the fate of the Rosenbergs and the travails of an editorial assistant new to both publishing and love. The Vixen is irresistible.
01/01/2021
In 1953, Simon Putnam is thrilled to land a job with a classy New York publishing company but not so thrilled with his first assignment. He's editing a bodice-ripper titled The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic , which incongruously draws on the execution of the Rosenbergs, and he must keep secret his family's ties to Ethel Rosenberg. From National Book Award finalist Prose.
Narrator Tristan Morris inhabits the first-person protagonist of this fine audiobook. Morris’s measured pacing and thoughtful tone work well to create the mood of the 1950s at the height of the Red Scare. Morris’s deliberate cadence and earnest tone add to the revelation of the mystery at the center of the complex, textured, and richly detailed story. Prose has created a splendid cast of characters who inhabit the demimonde of New York publishing. Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard grad whose name and appearance belie his Jewish roots, takes a low-level job at a prestigious publishing house. When he’s inexplicably given an anti-communist potboiler to edit, the plot unspools. This historical fiction provides a grand listening experience. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Narrator Tristan Morris inhabits the first-person protagonist of this fine audiobook. Morris’s measured pacing and thoughtful tone work well to create the mood of the 1950s at the height of the Red Scare. Morris’s deliberate cadence and earnest tone add to the revelation of the mystery at the center of the complex, textured, and richly detailed story. Prose has created a splendid cast of characters who inhabit the demimonde of New York publishing. Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard grad whose name and appearance belie his Jewish roots, takes a low-level job at a prestigious publishing house. When he’s inexplicably given an anti-communist potboiler to edit, the plot unspools. This historical fiction provides a grand listening experience. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
2021-03-17 A trashy anti-communist novel poses a moral dilemma for a young editor.
On June 19, 1953, narrator Simon Putnam and his parents grimly watch a TV reporter announce that the Rosenbergs have been executed as Soviet spies. With her customary deft hand, Prose sketches the family dynamic as they comment on the coverage: Recent Harvard grad Simon loves his idealistic mother and cynical father but is embarrassed by the immigrant origins they share with the Rosenbergs. His mother grew up with Ethel on the Lower East Side, which is not something Simon wants getting around at Landry, Landry, and Bartlett, the distinguished publishing house where his uncle Madison, a feared literary critic, gets him an entry-level job. Simon hopes to follow Madison’s tracks out of Coney Island, so he’s thrilled when charismatic Warren Landry asks him to edit a manuscript, until he realizes that The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic depicts Ethel Rosenberg as a communist Mata Hari seducing every man in sight and, by the way, as guilty as hell. The firm is in dire financial shape, Warren confides; if Simon can make this mess “less bad” they could have a sorely needed bestseller. Tantalized by the prospect of a promotion, plus the alluring photo of author Anya Partridge, Simon suppresses his qualms and gets to work. Hilarious excerpts from the appalling manuscript provide Prose’s characteristic humor in a story that otherwise has a more serious tone than her norm. Numerous hints are dropped that this project is not what it seems, and readers who know their American cultural history may spot the big reveal well before Simon does, but Prose maintains our interest with a vivid portrait of his internal conflicts: guilt over his participation in “this commodification of Ethel’s tragedy” intensified by guilt over distancing himself from his parents; lust for the intriguingly weird Anya conflicting with a crush on supernice publicity director Elaine Geller. Simon gets a stinging reality check in the novel’s climax, but he also gets a partial revenge and finds his life’s direction in the mildly improbable but touching final developments.
Smart, assured fiction from a master storyteller and thoughtful social commentator.