Readers of well-crafted historical fiction such as Trust by Hernan Diaz will be drawn in by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's sure-footed Mutual Interest, which is set in turn-of-the century Manhattan, in the aftermath of the Gilded Age, with occasional excursions to Hollywood, Calif., and Utica, N.Y. Wolfgang-Smith (Glassworks) is nothing short of virtuosic in her wry and witty world-building, which immediately immerses readers into a rough-and-tumble capitalist quagmire where the stakes are incredibly high and safety nets are totally absent.
Protagonist Vivian Lesperance comes of age in a home where she's been underwhelmingly and antagonistically parented, and her prospects are limited. She quickly realizes that if she's going to survive, she must rely on her charm and manipulative abilities, primarily with the women she seduces, who provide her with economic support for a time. When that time is clearly up and her appeal with her most recent lover, a diva, has worn thin, Vivian needs a new plan, which she finds in the form of awkward, sexually surreptitious, socially ascendent Midwestern transplant Oscar Schmidt, who is "caught between his old life and his new, his farm boy accent and his fourteen-step toilette."
Vivian assists Oscar in navigating the competitive waters of his business and muffles the potential reputational damage of both of their same-sex adventures by marrying him. Her skills are such that she manages, in dramatic fashion, to provide Oscar with professional and romantic riches via his business rival, Squire Clancy, another misfit, though one from a higher social class. This she does by spontaneously engineering Squire's plunge into a walrus-filled pool, necessitating a heroic rescue by Oscar.
Their three-way alliance yields enormous benefits for all, and their lives achieve a stability that none of them had enjoyed before, which lasts for well over a decade. "Landlords and bank tellers and office supply salesmen all attended to Vivian without the need for any dazzling charm or misdirection, without any of the thousand invisible and exhausting steps that went into living on someone else's credit."
But threats to their unconventional union--blackmail, social expectation, and justified labor unrest--loom, and any of them could dismantle the home they've so carefully constructed for themselves.
This is a novel of families won and lost, love, envy, and betrayal told in a remarkably fresh and entertaining way, with immersive period detail and compelling emotional stakes. Mutual Interest is essential reading for lovers of historical and accessible literary fiction. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's Mutual Interest is the best of what historical fiction can be: immersive, enlightening, entertaining, and deeply engaging.