The Audacity
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A bracing satire about the implosion of a Theranos-like company, a collapsing marriage, and a billionaires’ “philanthropy summit,” for fans of Hari Kunzru and The White Lotus. In 72 hours, a blockbuster exposé will reveal Victoria Stevens’s multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband, Guy Sarvananthan, to face the fallout— and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Opting for the latter, he takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world’s biggest problems to “eradicate forever.” Guy drinks and drugs his way into oblivion, through manicured jungles and aboard superyachts, amid captains of industry, legions of staff, and unlikely saboteurs. Meanwhile, Victoria narrates her side of the story from an off-the-grid location in the California desert. In scribbled diary entries shot through with cultish self-help mantras, she plots her comeback, confident she’ll prove everyone wrong. Again. Ryan Chapman’s incisive novel is a swan dive into the abyss and “Martin Amis’s Money for really late, late capitalism” (Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time).
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This is a book that surprised me when it showed up on my library holds shelf. This isn't uncommon for me–I'll often read a review of an upcoming book, think it sounds interesting, request it, and then forget about it until it shows up. Then I have to squint at it and remember why I wanted it in in the first place. I think in this case I must have read something that compared Victoria's company to Theranos and that got me interested in the scam angle. UNFORTUNATELY much like [b:Sucker 61151268 Sucker Daniel Hornsby https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669324045l/61151268.SY75.jpg 94898827], I was led astray. Authors please stop luring me in by saying you're writing about an Elizabeth Holmes-standin and then actually writing about ineffectual men in the orbit of Elizabeth Holmes. I don't care about them!! Get me in the head of the scam queen!! (To be fair this book kind of tries to do that but Victoria's POV is maybe 25% of the book compared to Guy's.)It's marketed as a “satire” but like....is it?? The language reminds me a little bit of David Foster Wallace (who I DO LIKE) but it seems to lack the heart of DFW which is like the main point of DFW. IDK. IDK. Bleh. I did finish the whole thing though, mostly bc it's pretty short and also I guess I maintained some optimism that it might turn the ship around and focus more on the aspects that I thought were more interesting. But alas it never did.
