by Jonathan Dee (Get the Book)A Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Privileges (2010), Dee is adept at meshing the complexities of marriage and family life with the paradoxes of the zeitgeist. In his sixth meticulously lathed and magnetizing novel, he riffs on the practice of crisis management, beginning with the abrupt end to the seemingly happy home of lawyer Ben, housewife Helen, and their 14-year-old adopted Chinese daughter, Sara. After Ben's scandalous self-destruction, Helen heads resolutely into Manhattan and manages to get a job at a shabby little public-relations agency. There she convinces clients desperate to repair their public image to apologize for their bad behavior and ask for forgiveness, a radical approach in a field dedicated to deception. When she tries to help movie megastar Hamilton, with whom she grew up and who is now facing the abyss, everything comes to a boil. In this cunning novel of selfishness, despair, and second chances, Dee nets the absurdities of a society geared to communicate in a thousand electronic modes while those closest to each other can barely make eye connect. --Booklist
