Twelve years after Schmidt Delivered Louis Begley returns to his most famous literary creation, Albert Schmidt.
Framed by scenes set at the cusp of 2009, Schmidt Steps Back quickly shifts to 1995, when "Schmidtie," as he's known to his friends, becomes infatuated with Alice Verplanck, a Frenchwoman 15 years his junior and the widow of his protégé and former law partner. Begley meticulously chronicles Schmidt's enthusiastic, if often fumbling, efforts to win over the younger woman while simultaneously exploring his relationships with his former lover Carrie, a Puerto Rican waitress younger than his daughter, and Charlotte, the brittle and emotionally distant daughter herself.
In the years since the death of his wife and his retirement from Wall Street, Schmidt has come to head the foundation established by his friend, Egyptian-American businessman Mike Mansour, a job that offers him ample European travel and a first-class lifestyle. His sexual enthusiasm can only be described as enviable for a man who's eligible for Medicare.
Begley himself spent a long career as a corporate lawyer in a prestigious New York firm not unlike Schmidt's, and didn't produce his first novel, Wartime Lies, until he was 58. In Schmidt Steps Back, he excels in his deft manipulation of our feelings about his protagonist. One moment, Schmidt is a chilly, vaguely anti-Semitic WASP gliding through life as a smug member of the One Percent; suddenly, when he's struggling to reconnect with his estranged daughter or desperately pursuing Alice, he becomes a figure of true pathos. In this and his other literary incarnations, he's a character undeniably worthy of our attention. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer