{ "item_title" : "The Award", "item_author" : [" Matthew Pearl "], "item_description" : "The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition, but it quickly evolves into something darker and more disturbing. Matthew Pearl's addictive and propulsive novel has the twisted nightmare logic of a Patricia Highsmith thriller.--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can't Win and Mrs. FletcherA propulsive and gripping novel about the literary world, ambition, deception and murder and the twisted corner where they all intersect. Matthew Pearl grabs you from the first sentence and doesn't let go.--Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Night We Lost HimThe author of Save Our Souls and The Dante Club makes his eagerly awaited return to fiction with this irreverent and propulsive novel about a young writer trying to make his way through a cutthroat literary scene that turns deadly.David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.Suddenly Silas is interested--if intensely spiteful.But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.Fate intervenes--with shocking consequences. . . .With the wit and psychological wisdom of The Plot and The Winner, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/344/527/0063445271_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "30.00", "online_price" : "30.00", "our_price" : "30.00", "club_price" : "30.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "30.00" } }

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Some aspiring authors will do anything for literary glory. Matthew Pearl knows this, and his gratifying and unapologetically cynical novel, The Award, turns a spotlight on the world of American publishing and rotates it, with some angles more flattering than others. At the story’s center are a would-be novelist, an established author churlish to lesser talents, and ruthless competitors jealous of any good fortune for their peers. The tale begins in 2008 when 28-year-old David Trent and his partner, Bonnie, rent the top floor of a three-story Victorian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “Boston’s best-educated and haughtiest neighbor.” David is frustrated by his lack of literary success, having spent five years working on a novel called The Crises. He hopes his luck is about to change, as the resident of the townhouse’s bottom floors is Silas Hale, a Pulitzer winner and author of “complex novels written for sophisticated readers”—precisely the sort of public figure David yearns to be. Unfortunately, Silas is a wretched neighbor. The building’s only thermostat is in his apartment, and he refuses to turn it up. David and Bonnie are forced to endure freezing temperatures, a condition so intolerable that Bonnie moves out. David stays, hoping to win Silas over and gain a mentor in the process. Pearl has great fun establishing Silas’ misanthropy and David’s hopefulness. Then he adds a wrinkle: David publishes The Crises and unexpectedly wins the Boston Literary Prize for Best First Novel. This validation makes Silas more receptive to David’s overtures. Until, that is, a shocking accident jeopardizes David’s good fortune and motivates a rival to investigate whether David’s culpability is greater than he’s letting on. It would spoil the pleasure to reveal that plot twist here. Suffice it to say that though the literary world may have “no morality in it,” as a character laments, one can’t deny the virtues of a novel this good.