THE PESSIMISTS

Ball, Bethany

ISBN 10: 0802158889 / ISBN 13: 9780802158888

Published by Grove Press, 2021

About this Item

New unread first edition (stated, complete number line) in New dust jacket with price intact. 291 pages, unmarked ; DD0423 B FIC; 5.75 X 1 X 8.5 inches; 291 pages.

Seller Inventory # 52966

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE PESSIMISTS
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802158889
• ISBN 13: 9780802158888
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

From Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist Bethany Ball comes a biting and darkly funny new novel that follows a set of privileged, jaded Connecticut suburbanites whose cozy, seemingly picture-perfect, lives begin to unravel amid shocking turns of fate and revelations of long-held secrets.

Welcome to small-town Connecticut, a place whose inhabitants seem to have it all — the status, the homes, the money, and the ennui. There’s Tripp and Virginia, beloved hosts whom the community idolizes, whose basement hides among other things a secret stash of guns and a drastic plan to survive the end times. There’s Gunter and Rachel, recent transplants who left New York City to raise their children, only to feel both imprisoned by the banality of suburbia. And Richard and Margot, community veterans whose extramarital affairs and battles with mental health are disguised by their enviably polished veneers and perfect children. At the center of it all is the Petra School, the most coveted of all the private schools in the state, a supposed utopia of mindfulness and creativity, with a history as murky and suspect as our character’s inner worlds.

With deep wit and delicious incisiveness, in The Pessimists, Bethany Ball peels back the veneer of upper-class white suburbia to expose the destructive consequences of unchecked privilege and moral apathy in a world that is rapidly evolving without them. This is a superbly drawn portrait of a community, and its couples, torn apart by unmet desires, duplicity, hypocrisy, and dangerous levels of discontent.

About the Author

BETHANY BALL was born in Detroit and has lived in Santa Fe, New Jersey, Miami, and Israel. She now lives in New York with her family. She is the author of What to Do About the Solomons.