Thousand Pardons (Dee) - Book Reviews

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