A Book Review - The Margot Affair: A Novel Novel by Sanaë Lemoine

Publisher: Crown/Archetype, 2020  "There were so many of us, children of these double families who dreamed of the other side." Margot Louve is a secret: the child of a longstanding affair between an influential French politician with presidential ambitions and a prominent stage actress. This hidden family exists in stolen moments in a small Parisian apartment on the Left Bank. It is a house of cards that Margot--fueled by a longing to be seen and heard--decides to tumble. The summer of her seventeenth birthday, she meets the man who will set her plan in motion: a well-regarded journalist whose trust seems surprisingly easy to gain. But as Margot is drawn into an adult world she struggles to comprehend, she learns how one impulsive decision can threaten a family's love with ruin, shattering the lives of those around her in ways she could never have imagined. Exposing the seams between private lives and public faces, The Margot Affair is a novel of deceit, desire, and transgression--and the exhilarating knife-edge upon which the danger of telling the truth outweighs the cost of keeping secrets. Advance praise for The Margot Affair "Subtle, beautiful, serious."--Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! "Sanaë Lemoine is an extraordinary new talent. One who makes an intergenerational story of loneliness and intrigue read like a diary and a page-turner and a masterful debut, all at once."--Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling "Powerful and affecting . . . truly exceptional."--Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors