Scott Johnston's The Sandersons Fail Manhattan is a satirical novel designed to capture its social, political, and cultural moment. And once that moment has passed, the novel will retain its zing on the strength of its plotting and humor.
William Sanderson, a parent at Manhattan's Lenox Hill School for Girls, is attending his first board meeting when the head of school announces that, in response to Lenox's diversity efforts, it's welcoming a transfer student who "self-identifies as goblincore, a growing subculture inspired by the folklore of goblins." William, a financier, can't muster much enthusiasm for this news; what he wants from the school more than diversity is its help getting his elder daughter, a Lenox senior, into Yale, his alma mater. How will the "eco-sexual" transfer student fare at Lenox? And how will William take it when he learns that moneyed, white-dominant private schools like Lenox have fallen out of favor with college-admissions officers?
The Sandersons Fail Manhattan is a wicked spoof of modern mores ("The dining tables at Lenox were all round, someone having decided that rectangular tables resulted in power imbalances"). Johnston (Campusland), like Paul Rudnick with his novel What Is Wrong with You?, is an equal-opportunity skewerer: he sticks it to everyone (WASPs, virtue signalers, social climbers) and everything (elite schools, the college-admissions racket, conscientious capitalism) without drifting into mean-spiritedness (a transgender student's plight is handled with terrific sensitivity). As the novel's perspective wanders from character to character, it's clear that Johnston's main beef is with cowardice--a politically neutral identifier. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer