The Audacity
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A bracing satire about the implosion of a Theranos-like company, a collapsing marriage, and a billionaires’ “philanthropy summit,” for fans of Hari Kunzru and The White Lotus.
In 72 hours, a blockbuster exposé will reveal Victoria Stevens’s multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband, Guy Sarvananthan, to face the fallout— and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Opting for the latter, he takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world’s biggest problems to “eradicate forever.” Guy drinks and drugs his way into oblivion, through manicured jungles and aboard superyachts, amid captains of industry, legions of staff, and unlikely saboteurs.
Meanwhile, Victoria narrates her side of the story from an off-the-grid location in the California desert. In scribbled diary entries shot through with cultish self-help mantras, she plots her comeback, confident she’ll prove everyone wrong. Again.
Ryan Chapman’s incisive novel is a swan dive into the abyss and “Martin Amis’s Money for really late, late capitalism” (Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chapman (Riots I Have Known) unspools a droll dramedy loosely based on the spectacular fall of fraudulent healthcare startup Theranos. Victoria Stevens purports to cure cancer with her company, PrevYou. She's married to Guy, a lapsed composer who enjoys New York City's "gala circuit" and the "sudden, stratospheric wealth" derived from Victoria's business. As news about the fraud at the center of PrevYou is about to break, Victoria fakes her death. Guy, who's "never had a real job," is blindsided. In the aftermath, he decides to fly, in Victoria's stead, to "the Quorum," a Davos-like conference where billionaires gather on a private island to solve the world's problems. Chapters from Victoria's point of view find her holed up in Joshua Tree, where she pursues the "Zone of Utmost Throb" (her term for a metaphysical space of inspiration for the next venture), and reflects on her husband's nature ("Guy was always supportive. Ever loyal. Deeply incurious. All the qualities one seeks in an ideal partner"). The jaunty tone and adroit prose carry the reader along, mostly making up for the plot's lack of momentum. It's a pithy send-up of one of Silicon Valley's most intriguing crimes.
