French Exit

When I started listening to the audiobook edition of French Exit, I thought, "Oh, this narrator [the book is read by Lorna Raver] is a bit much." Well, it turned out she was just right, because French Exit itself, especially its two main characters, moneyed widow Frances Price and her coddled adult son Malcolm, is a bit much too, in the best way. DeWitt has turned his comic mind to westerns (The Sisters Brothers), Mitteleuropean fairy tales (Undermajordomo Minor), and now to what he calls a "tragedy of manners." It's an inspired choice. The novel is kept afloat, for the most part, by Frances's sour, witty remarks, and by the fun of their tiny family's receding fortunes ("moneyed," in their case, is in the past tense), and for me that was plenty. It's horribly enjoyable.