Dear Monica Lewinsky

A Novel

De: Julia Langbein

From the acclaimed author of American Mermaid (“Sublime”—NYTBR) comes a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites.

“Langbein has the uncanny ability to make a reader laugh out loud again and again while also laying bare — in her brilliant, singular way — the specific travail of being a young woman.” —Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

“Comic novels with heft are the rarest stars in the literary firmament, and this one burns as brightly as the sun.” —Katy Hays, author of Saltwater

Forty-five-year-old Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jean’s longstanding malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels.

In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint, a figure of both suffering and sympathy. To Jean’s shock, Saint Monica appears—powerful, radiant, wise and witty—and guides Jean like a Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998. Had Jean merely been naïve and stupid as she has told herself for so long? Was it sheer weakness that led her into the affair? Or will Jean, with Saint Monica by her side, see past blame to the beauty of her younger self’s search for pleasure, connection, and transcendence?

Told in flashbacks of those sunlit six weeks in France, replete with Saint Monica’s flinty, fiery insights and interspersed with retellings of the lives of real historical martyrs, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and wholly original examination of desire and its costs, appetite and its denial, certain defeat and surprise renewal. It asks what grace and forgiveness might look like in our own individual lives and collectively.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“[A] complex comic confection . . . Its bold, clever comedic lineaments [support] a serious and poignant examination of female desire and male power.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“What a wild, wonderful essential novel this is. Julia Langbein has the uncanny ability to make a reader laugh out loud again and again while also laying bare — in her brilliant, singular way — the specific travail of being a young woman.”
—Claire Lombardo, bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same As It Ever Was

“An original, tender, and outrageously funny novel about hunger, desire, and the vulnerable (sometimes shameful) moments that make us, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a miracle. With incomparable tact and warmth, Julia Langbein achieves the impossible: balancing humor, consequence, and an irresistible ensemble of personalities against the glittering backdrop of a French summer. Comic novels with heft are the rarest stars in the literary firmament, and this one burns as brightly as the sun.”
—Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author of Saltwater

“Hilarious, poignant, and exquisitely written, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a wholly original feminist ode. Langbein balances academic satire and emotional excavation, all with her signature wink. I’m obsessed with her mind.”
—Emily Habeck, author of Shark Heart