In Juliet Lapidos's debut novel, Talent, academic ambition meets cynical self-loathing as Anna Brisker languishes in the seventh year of her Ph.D. program at Collegiate University. Anxious about disappointing her pretentious parents and emotionally distant adviser, Anna is frantic not just to finish her dissertation but to pen a project that will win back the respect of her family, peers and teachers. After meeting Helen Langley, niece of the late, famously commercial author Frederick Langley, Anna discovers that Frederick has left behind a series of unpublished notebooks that could give her the material she needs. But the Langley family's sleazy secrets and Anna's own mounting desperation prove to be a malevolent combination.
Anna's biting, first-person narration leads the story convincingly from the start and captures the selfish desire, obsession and contempt that defines a larger critique of academia. More importantly, she's a strongly sympathetic protagonist--even as Anna makes one wrong decision after another, she remains more a tragic hero than a comedic villain. Lapidos also expertly captures the Ivy League atmosphere, puncturing its ballooning worth with rapid, insightful jabs. Between its baguette-ripping, self-congratulatory graduate students and its posturing, psychoanalytic professors, the world of New Harbor, Conn., is far more real than the theory of inspiration with which Anna is grappling. Meanwhile, with its quick pace and spiraling action, the mystery at the heart of the story serves as the driving external action to Anna's internal unraveling. A meta-criticism of criticism, Talent is most successful at striking an uncanny balance between laughing at the world that constructs characters like Anna and convincing the reader of its importance. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor