A Thousand Pardons
Jonathon Dee, 2013
Random House
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812993219
Summary
For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Richard Russo, Jonathan Dee’s novels are masterful works of literary fiction. In this sharply observed tale of self-invention and public scandal, Dee raises a trenchant question: what do we really want when we ask for forgiveness?
Once a privileged and loving couple, the Armsteads have now reached a breaking point. Ben, a partner in a prestigious law firm, has become unpredictable at work and withdrawn at home—a change that weighs heavily on his wife, Helen, and their preteen daughter, Sara. Then, in one afternoon, Ben’s recklessness takes an alarming turn, and everything the Armsteads have built together unravels, swiftly and spectacularly.
Thrust back into the working world, Helen finds a job in public relations and relocates with Sara from their home in upstate New York to an apartment in Manhattan. There, Helen discovers she has a rare gift, indispensable in the world of image control: She can convince arrogant men to admit their mistakes, spinning crises into second chances. Yet redemption is more easily granted in her professional life than in her personal one.
As she is confronted with the biggest case of her career, the fallout from her marriage, and Sara’s increasingly distant behavior, Helen must face the limits of accountability and her own capacity for forgiveness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1962
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Prix Fitzgerald Prize
• Currently—lives in Syracuse, New York
Jonathan Dee, an American novelist and non-fiction writer, was born in New York City. He graduated from Yale University, where he studied fiction writing with John Hersey.
Dee's first job out of college was at The Paris Review, as an Associate Editor and personal assistant to George Plimpton. Early in his tenure with Plimpton, Dee helped pull off the popular April Fool's joke about Sidd Finch, a fictitious baseball pitcher Plimpton wrote about for Sports Illustrated.
Writing
Dee has published several novels, including most recently The Privileges (2010), A Thousand Pardons (2013), and The Locals (2017).
He is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and contributor to Harper's. In 2008 Dee collaborated on the oral biography of Plimpton, "George, Being George." He interviewed Hersey and co-interviewed Grace Paley for The Paris Review's The Art of Fiction series.
Recognition
Dee was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2010 for criticism in Harper's. His 2010 novel, The Privileges, won the 2011 Prix Fitzgerald prize and was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
He was the second winner of the St. Francis College Literary Prize.
He has also been the recipient of two fellowships: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Currently, Dee serves as a professor in the graduate writing program at Syracuse University, where he lives. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/4/2017.)
Book Reviews
Jonathan Dee’s trim new book arrives—like the handsome characters he writes about—burdened with high expectations.... The opening of A Thousand Pardons is, in fact, instantly absorbing. When you meet Helen and Ben Armstead...so many stress fractures are spidering across the surface of their marriage that you’ll want to shield your eyes.... Quick shifts in tone and point of view as their shiny marriage shatters make these opening pages irresistible.... [Helen] manages to land a job at a moribund three-person PR firm.... She has no experience with such work, but she has “an extraordinary gift,” a colleague claims. But in a novel set in crisply real, modern-day Manhattan, Helen’s enterprise seems silly. The dialogue is corny, the setting is sitcom fresh.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
The rich, Dee seems to believe, aren’t just different from you and me. They’re a lot worse. And yet in A Thousand Pardons, his hugely enjoyable new novel, they get a pass.... Dee is a snappy, cinematic writer, and it’s very hard not to inhale [the opening] section of the novel in one greedy sitting.... Dee writes fabulous, Japanese-street tidy sentences. This gives him an almost spooky access to the inner lives of his characters.... There is a heat haze of real emotion rising off this book.
John Freeman - Boston Globe
[An] undercooked new novel.... A number of problems plague this novel: the thin Hamilton is ultimately inconsequential to the book, as is the romance between Sara and a black classmate discovering identity politics. Worse is Helen’s transformation from housewife to PR genius, which happens in a blink and is given no support.... These flaws are a pity because Dee shines when unveiling the inner workings of the PR industry, which is at once ubiquitous and obscure. When the author focuses on the ways in which public opinion is routinely manipulated, he gives a tantalizing glimpse at what might have been.
Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize finalist Dee goes au courant with the story of a woman who returns to work when her corporate-lawyer husband loses all after an egregious act at the office. Helen, now in public relations, has a handy talent for getting powerful men to apologize for their misdeeds.
Library Journal
Dee is adept at meshing the complexities of marriage and family life with the paradoxes of the zeitgeist. In his sixth meticulously lathed and magnetizing novel, he riffs on the practice of crisis management [and] the absurdities of a society geared to communicate in a thousand electronic modes while those closest to each other can barely make eye contact.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A marriage flames out. Gleefully, thrillingly, Dee (The Privileges, 2010, etc.) tracks its aftermath, focusing primarily on the evolution of the ex-wife. That's Helen Armstead, struggling to save a dying marriage. Husband Ben, partner in a New York City law firm, has been so deeply depressed he's ignored not just her and their upstate home, but their 12-year-old daughter, Sara (Chinese, adopted).... Helen, a stay-at-home mom, must hustle to find work. ... Her crisis management skills attract the attention of a huge PR company, which recruits her. This is not some empowerment fairy tale; Dee keeps the action grounded and credible.... Pulitzer finalist Dee has written a page turner without sacrificing a smidgen of psychological insight. What a triumph.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Helen believes abjection and confession are transformative. But why doesn’t Ben’s abject apology toward the beginning of the book work on Helen? Does he need to atone as well as apologize?
2. Describe the public relations environment in which Helen finds herself. As a sincere person, how does she conform to the environment...or does it conform to her?
3. The collection of clients needing the help of Helen and particularly Malloy Worldwide is a pretty nasty group. Why does Helen not hesitate to help bad guys? Does she think everyone is redeemable? Are her lack of judgment and her sympathy part of what makes her special?
4. Why are the stories of powerful people brought low so compelling? Has the ritual of public apology become a way for the culture to remind itself of how we define “good” behavior? Or is it just an opportunity for hypocrisy and schadenfreude?
4. In A Thousand Pardons, some of the characters want a break from the past and the accountability that comes with contemplating the past. But Helen remembers everything, and certainly confessing and apologizing are acts of remembering. Do you see a connection between memory and morality? Is willful amnesia an American problem?
5. Helen’s gift reaches its limit with the Catholic Church. Has she finally lost interest in absolving powerful men?
6. The narrator encourages readers to have an intimacy with the book's characters. At the same time there is a sort of pulling back on the the narrator's part, a restraint from passing judgment Do you believe the characters should be judged? As a reader, do you judge them?
7. At various points after the scandal, Sara, Ben, and Helen lurk around their Westchester town trying not to be recognized. Yet in the end they return to their house there. Shouldn't they just leave and start over somewhere else? Why don't they?
8. The book, though basically serious, contains a lot of dry wit, sly humor, and many moments of sharp irony. There are even some elements of screwball comedy. Is it wrong to call it a funny book?
9. What does Ben mean when he says that he is “almost comfortable” in his disgrace, that he likes the “sad, clear vision” he has?
10. Ben’s journey takes him from a despised life of upper class security to abjection to something close to integrity. His storyline does not go the way the reader expects, partly because he refuses to let himself off the hook for what he did. Has he redeemed himself by the end?
11. The ending of the novel is somewhat open, and, like the rest of the book, it happens quickly. Can you imagine what happens next to Helen, Ben, and Sara?
(LitLovers adapted these questions from a publisher interview with the author.)