Putney : A Novel
Author(s): Sofka Zinovieff
A Refinery 29 Best August Book • A Vulture Best August Book • An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
“Zinovieff is obviously working with themes playing out in contemporary culture, but her novel is also reminiscent of the work of Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt...Timely and nuanced.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Thought-provoking and relevant."— The Washington Post
A provocative and absorbing novel about a teenage girl’s intoxicating romance with a powerful older man and her discovery, decades later, that her happy memories are hiding a painful truth.
A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s beautiful activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his young daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse.
Ralph showers Daphne with tokens of his affection—clandestine gifts and secret notes. In a home that is exciting but often lonely, Daphne finds Ralph to be a dazzling companion for many years. When Ralph accompanies Daphne alone to meet her parents in Greece, their relationship intensifies irrevocably. One person knows the truth about their relationship: Daphne’s best friend Jane, whose awe of the intoxicating Greenslay family ensures her silence.
Decades later Daphne is back in London. After years lost to decadence and drug abuse, she is struggling to create a normal, stable life for herself and her adolescent daughter. When circumstances bring her back in touch with her long-lost friend, Jane, their reunion inevitably turns to Ralph, now a world-famous musician also living in the city. Daphne’s recollections of her youth and her growing anxiety over her own young daughter eventually lead to an explosive realization that propels her to confront Ralph and their years spent together.
Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints—victim, perpetrator, and witness—Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
Review(s):
“Thought-provoking and relevant.”
“Told from three vividly established points of view, and traveling back and forth between the 1970s and today, the novel makes a convincing case for how the anything goes ethos of that earlier decade can lead to a reckoning decades later.”
“The characters in Zinovieff’s book are alternatively complicit and sympathetic. The novel manages its hefty load through brilliant writing, astute psychological insight, and the scenery of Greek islands. This post-MeToo Lolita will challenge your preconceptions on every page.”
“Zinovieff’s novel is a nuanced, thought-provoking plunge into the questioning depths of consent and exploitation. Putney is a discussion starter. ”
“Sofka Zinovieff’s second novel .. delves deep into the discussions surrounding consent and abuse of power. She has written a contemporary Lolita in which the rules of engagement have changed, women are speaking out about the ways they have been misused and the Humbert Humberts face prosecution and disgrace...“A novel that is accomplished, timely and unusually well wrought.”
“Zinovieff’s novel, about the relationship between a young girl and a much older man in the 1970s, and the woman’s present-day reckoning with what actually happened, raises important questions about consent and agency.”
“Zinovieff is obviously working with themes playing out in contemporary culture, but her novel is also reminiscent of the work of Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt...Timely and nuanced.”
“Zinovieff’s triptych is too nuanced for hashtags, yet perfectly tuned to #MeToo.”
‘This book is truly memorable and thought-provoking; throughout, Zinovieff sustains wonderfully perplexing and complex ambiguities. What is love, and what is exploitation? What is truth and what is self-deception? What is righteousness and what is hypocrisy? Can contradictions be simultaneously true?..I’ll remember the characters forever.’
“..a disturbing, well-structured, nuanced story that provides no simple answers — an important addition to an urgent, current conversation.”
ISBN: 9780062847577