The Unfortunates - Tapa dura

"Sophie McManus, whose writing reminds me of Anne Tyler or Jonathan Franzen ... shows us the world through the cloudy lens of the truly moneyed, and gives us a riveting sense that something horrible is about to happen to these people. She corrals our prurience beautifully." (Evening Standard)

"McManus renders her opulent protagonists sympathetic by investigating their family ‘values’ with wit and generosity" (Daily Mail)

"A very sharp novel" (Evening Standard, Books of the Year)

"McManus, with her intricate re-creation of CeCe’s regal life, hearkens to an earlier artist far less frequently invoked: Edith Wharton . . . some of the funniest writing I’ve read in years: Martin Amis funny; wheezing, choke-on-your-laughter funny. After reading so many comic novels that eventually shatter in brittle cynicism or evaporate in gassy sentimentality, I moved through The Unfortunates with a slowly accruing sense of awe as these characters grew simultaneously more outrageous and more sympathetic." (Washington Post)

"A truly dexterous writer, one who eyes the insular world she has chosen to crack open for us with as much wisdom as wit...formidable gifts for social satire" (New Yorker)

"Reads as a cross between Tom Wolfe and Brett Easton Ellis at their respective peaks" (Paste magazine)

"The Unfortunates is both a mirror on the income inequality of the current moment and a social novel in the old, grand, plotty mode: voracious for detail and punctuated by gasp-inducing turns of fate. Its subjects are money and the people unfortunate enough to have it. Who knew the rich deserved so much to be pitied?" (Salvatore Scibona, author of THE END)

"What is truly rich about this stunning debut novel, beyond the over privileged social class in question, is the brilliant language―lucid, quick, accessible, yet almost cubist in its syntactical swerves and surprising word choices―with which Sophie McManus invests the inner lives of the Somners, mother, son, and daughter-in-law – three unforgettable protagonists." (Jaimy Gordon, author of LORD OF MISRULE)

"In finely etched detail as sharp as shards of glass, McManus reveals the corrupting power of wealth and the myriad ways it infects individual lives, and families.As relevant as it is compulsively readable." (Amanda Coplin, author of THE ORCHARDIST)

"Sophie McManus, whose writing reminds me of Anne Tyler or Jonathan Franzen ... shows us the world through the cloudy lens of the truly moneyed, and gives us a riveting sense that something horrible is about to happen to these people. She corrals our prurience beautifully."

A sharply written, funny and heart-breaking debut about inheritance, influence, class and power. Who knew the rich deserved our pity?

CeCe Somner, once known for her cruel wit as much as for her tremendous generosity, is now in opulent decline. Afflicted with a rare disease and touched by mortality for the first time, her gilded, bygone values collide with an unforgiving present. As her troubled, spoiled son George and his outsider wife, Iris, struggle to resolve mounting financial and familial troubles, CeCe must face the Somner dynasty’s dark legacy; all three must learn what life beyond the long, shimmering shadow cast by the family’s past may become. But when George’s secrets culminate in an unexpected crime, no riches can put things right for the unfortunate Somners.

The Unfortunates is a rollicking, wide-ranging story of pharmaceutical drug trials and Wall Street corruption; of pride and prejudice; of paranoia and office politics; of inheritance, influence, class and power. Hilarious and heartbreaking, Sophie McManus's debut is a meditation on love and a contemporary American tragedy of breathtaking scope.