The Pessimists Hardcover – October 12, 2021 by Bethany Ball

Description

Author: Ball Bethany

Package Dimensions: 0x210x788

Number Of Pages: 304

Release Date: 12-10-2021

Details: Product Description

From Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist Bethany Ball comes a biting and darkly funny new novel that follows a set of privileged, jaded Connecticut suburbanites whose cozy, seemingly picture-perfect, lives begin to unravel amid shocking turns of fate and revelations of long-held secrets.
Welcome to small-town Connecticut, a place whose inhabitants seem to have it all — the status, the homes, the money, and the ennui. There’s Tripp and Virginia, beloved hosts whom the community idolizes, whose basement hides among other things a secret stash of guns and a drastic plan to survive the end times. There’s Gunter and Rachel, recent transplants who left New York City to raise their children, only to feel both imprisoned by the banality of suburbia. And Richard and Margot, community veterans whose extramarital affairs and battles with mental health are disguised by their enviably polished veneers and perfect children. At the center of it all is the Petra School, the most coveted of all the private schools in the state, a supposed utopia of mindfulness and creativity, with a history as murky and suspect as our character’s inner worlds.
With deep wit and delicious incisiveness, in The Pessimists, Bethany Ball peels back the veneer of upper-class white suburbia to expose the destructive consequences of unchecked privilege and moral apathy in a world that is rapidly evolving without them. This is a superbly drawn portrait of a community, and its couples, torn apart by unmet desires, duplicity, hypocrisy, and dangerous levels of discontent.

Review

Praise for The Pessimists:
One of New York Times’ “20 New Works of Fiction to Read this Fall”
One of Bustle’s Most Anticipated Books for October
One of E!’s 17 Books to Cozy Up With this Fall

“Cutting and concise…Consider it the east coast version of Big Little Lies.”—E! News Online
“Ball is a pleasure to read. Her sentences are brisk twists of the knife; every satirical dart is a bull’s-eye. She makes a meal out of her space-cadet suburbanites, with their expensive German cars and organic apple juice, but allows their concerns to be widely applicable: Will my children grow up to be OK? Will my life amount to anything? Does my spouse secretly loathe me? Should I be worried about this lump in my breast? Is the thrill of adultery powerful enough to outweigh the guilt of it? Suffering, Ball demonstrates, is universal, and fears are often irrational.” —Molly Young, New York Times
“Bethany Ball’s literary satire has all the drama of a domestic thriller. Following several messy families in one wealthy Connecticut town, The Pessimists revolves around parents’ relationships with each other, their children, and the prestigious academy that binds them all together.”—Bustle
“A stinging satire about the hollowness of the suburban dream… Withering in its barbed wit, Ball’s mordantly penetrating portrait of middle-class malaise teems with infidelity, inequity, mistrust, and disappointment.” —Booklist
“The Pessimists is honest and hilarious— treating suburban angst, marriage, and private school life both seriously and with the humor they’re due. Ball writes with the sharpened pen of writers like Meg Wolitzer and Taffy Brodesser-Akner, but with a dangerous edge and a pathos all her own.” —Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Finalist for The Great Believers
“As a portrait of a wealthy suburban community and the secret weirdos who inhabit it, this novel was perfection. From the private school where the kids aren’t actually learning anything to the dad stockpiling arms for the end of the world, I was with this story. There’s plenty of satire here, for sure, but I also genuinely rooted for these people’s private worries and hopes, the humanity that was still there under so much nonsense.” —Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes
“The Pessimists is a sweet-and-sour gimlet of a novel. It goes down easy, with a satirical edge and a knock-out punch. With raw honesty and sympathy,