The Unfortunates - Tapa dura

"In finely etched detail as sharp as shards of glass, McManus reveals in "The Unfortunates "the corrupting power of wealth and the myriad ways it infects individual lives and families. It is as relevant as it is compulsively readable." --Amanda Coplin, author of "The Orchardist"

Sophie McManus has a shrewd eye for telling gestures and an ear for cruel speech and kindness. She is an incisive, surprising prose stylist, and her debut novel heralds an exciting new talent with an old soul.--Christine Schutt, author of Prosperous Friends

Sophie McManus's stunning debut novel revisits American money and brilliantly reconfigures the tradition of fiction about the very rich. What is truly rich about this first novel is the language--lucid, quick, accessible, and yet almost cubist in its syntactical swerves and surprising word choices--with which McManus invests the inner lives of the Somners, mother, son, and daughter-in-law, three unforgettable and finally poignant protagonists.--Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule

Is there anything Sophie McManus can't do? Whether it's New York high society or the Amazonian rubber industry or the stubborn indignities of old age, McManus writes with brio and with humor and with immense sympathy. The virtuosity in these pages is astonishing, but just as astonishing is this novel's abiding heart.--Joshua Henkin, author of The World Without You and Matrimony

A big, chewy novel written with comic panache and an infectious tenderness toward the blunders of its heroes. "The Unfortunates" is both a mirror on the income inequality of the current moment and a social novel in the old, 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

Ms. McManus is a talented, intelligent writer, and the story is as well-paced as a good thriller.--Moira Hodgson "The Wall Street Journal "

Aside from the beauty of "The Unfortunates"' line-by-line prose, the novel's great strength is its multifaceted approach. It is an ambitious piece that encapsulates generations and continent-spanning bank accounts while never feeling too callously panoramic.--B. David Zarley "Paste Magazine "

A modern day Edith Wharton . . . Just often enough some unknown writer darts from the forest of little magazines to publish a novel that blows away the gathering shades of cultural despair . . . Her first novel, "The Unfortunates," merges Old World elegance and modern irony in a brilliant social satire of life among the 1 percent of the 1 percent . . . almost every sentence here has been worked, through a decade of composition and revision, into a jeweled strand of dry wit.--Ron Charles "The Washington Post "

McManus takes her readers through . . . with such narrative gusto (and a great many very pretty turns of phrase) that you'd think this were her twentieth novel instead of her first.--Steve Donoghue "OpenLettersMonthly.com "

[McManus's] achievement in this novel is creating characters who develop over time, who have goals and desires, who try as hard as they can but still mess up other people's lives. We care about them.--Stephanie Shapiro "The Buffalo News "