Caitlin Macy

Named to Buzzfeed's list of "5 Most Anticipated Women's Fiction Reads of 2018" "Mrs. could be the next Big Little Lies."--EW "Macy skewers power parents in this entertaining, sharp-eyed portrayal of privilege and it's price" -People Magazine In the well-heeled milieu of New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the center of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fueled culture. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women: Gwen Hogan, a childhood acquaintance who uncovers an explosive secret about Philippa's single days, and Minnie Curtis, a newcomer whose vast fortune and frank revelations about a penurious upbringing in Spanish Harlem put everyone on alert. When Gwen's husband, a heavy-drinking, obsessive prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office, stumbles over the connection between Philippa's past and the criminal investigation he is pursuing at all costs, this insulated society is forced to confront the rot at its core and the price it has paid to survive into the new millennium. Macy has written a modern-day HOUSE OF MIRTH, not for the age of railroads and steel but of hedge funds and overnight fortunes, of scorched-earth successes and abiding moral failures. A brilliant portrait of love, betrayal, fate and chance, MRS marries razor-sharp social critique and page-turning propulsion into an unforgettable tapestry of the way we live in the 21st Century.

A Novel

Mrs.

From the author of Mrs. and Fundamentals of Play comes a brilliant and biting short story collection about privilege, pride and our nagging need to belong. In an era of "hot takes" and easy generalizations, this collection is a reclaiming of the centrality of the individual in any narrative. In Macy's stories, human proclivities and fatal blind spots meet the nuances and ironies of the real world to trump the convenient, social-media driven narratives which sort people into neat but unrealistic boxes of insider or outsider; good or bad; with us or against us. Whether at home or abroad, Macy's female characters see their good intentions turn awry in the face of harsh realities -- a woman who tries to do a good deed for an underprivileged child sees it go horribly wrong. A wife, attempting to be good host to a friend's strange ex-boyfriend, finds herself in a compromising situation. And, in the title story, a young American wife fancies herself well-cultured in Italy until an accident occurs that reminds her just how much of a foreigner she truly is. In tales where expectations are overturned in shocking and sometimes brutal means, Macy forgoes easy moralization in favor of uncomfortable truths that reveal the complexity of what it means to be human.

A Blind Corner

Caitlin Macy's remarkable first novel is an evocation of a time and a place in which those things that were always so dependable--money, class, family--are threatened on all sides. Narrated by George Lenhart, scion of a family who lost their fortune but not their good name, The Fundamentals of Play follows five friends from prep school as they enter adult life in New York City in the aimless, early nineties, before the internet explosion. They work entry-level jobs at investment banks, spend weekends in the Hamptons. At their center is the fickle, elusive Kate Goodenow. Everyone is in love with Kate and only George understands her heart was captured long ago, and for good. Hailed as a Great Gatsby for the end of the twentieth century--The Fundamentals of Play introduces a brilliant new Lost Generation longing to live careless lives, while the situations around them are increasingly fraught with importance--and the world threatens to leave them behind.

The Fundamentals of Play

From the award-winning author of Mrs. and The Fundamentals of Play comes a brilliant and biting short story collection about pride, privilege, and our nagging need to belong. In an era of “hot takes” and easy generalizations, this collection reclaims the absurdities and paradoxes of life as it is actually lived from the American fantasy of “niceness”. In Macy’s world, human desires and fatal blind spots slam headlong into convenient, social-media-driven narratives that would sort us into neat boxes of insider or outsider; good or bad; with us or against us. Time and again, whether at home or in the age-old role of Americans abroad, Macy’s women see their good intentions turn awry. A woman who tries to do a good deed for an underprivileged child sees it go horribly wrong. A wife, attempting to be a good host to a friend’s strange ex-boyfriend, finds herself in a compromised situation. And, in the title story, a newlywed fancies herself a Euro-sophisticate until an accident reminds her just how truly foreign she really is. In tales where shocking and sometimes brutal events disabuse characters of their most cherished beliefs, Macy forgoes easy moralization in favor of uncomfortable truths that reveal the complexity of what it means to be human.

"Kate was what you wanted, somehow, in this infinitely ironic age. She was the kind of girl about whom other girls used to say, 'All right, so she's thin but,' trying vainly to suss out the appeal. And even now, when her name comes up, and with it the sulky protest it invariably evokes--'She's not that great'--I do not feel compelled to argue in her defense." Some fiction debuts have remarkably strong stories, some have refreshing new voices, some have perfect cultural timing. The Fundamentals of Play is that literary rarity which has all three. George Lenhart is, chronically, in love with Kate Goodenow. So is Nick Beale, the working-class son of a Maine lobsterman from the town where Kate spent her childhood summers. So is Chat Wethers, an old-money friend of George's from Dartmouth. And so is Harry Lombardi, a brilliant, startlingly successful, but socially awkward Dartmouth upstart who has been trying to enter this circle for years. It is George who tells the interwoven stories of these five young people, some of whom, in their lineage or finances, represent the last gasp of the old Northeastern Upper Class. Starting with the year after college, when they all land in Manhattan, George describes the good times and disappointments, ambition and manners, sexual secrets and money-cursed friendships, that have tied these people to one another for a lifetime. He tells of Nick's charismatic past and drug-ridden present, and he shows the snobbery and avarice that lurk in Kate's background--in stark contrast to her ineffable allure. And as George tells these stories (and observes Harry's spectacular rise in the new, as-yet-unnamed phenomenon of the Internet), he implicitly chronicles the end of an era and the emergence of a new definition of class--just as The Fundamentals of Play represents the emergence of a distinctive new talent in American fiction.

Caitlin Macy

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