A darkly entertaining satire set in present-day Cambridge, Mass., The Award by Matthew Pearl tells the story of an unscrupulous writer's improbable rise to the upper echelons of literary society. It is a superb caricature of a ruthlessly ambitious young man who will stop at nothing, even murder, to claw his way to the top.
Armed with an MFA, dwindling funds, and an endlessly patient fiancée, David Trent is "always trying to finish the same first novel" while fending off panic that "he could never be good enough." His rival is the self-assured, Harvard and Iowa Writers Workshop-educated Barnaby Masters, whose career trajectory, in Pearl's marvelously twisted plot, is inextricably linked to David's.
When David and his intended, Bonnie, rent an apartment above that of renowned author and New Yorker fiction editor Silas Hale, David is convinced the proximity to literary greatness will rub off on him. Remarkably, it does. David wins the "Boston Literary Prize for Best First Novel" for his debut, a feat that catapults him to national fame. Barnaby is grudgingly impressed, as is Silas, a mean old curmudgeon who bullies his new neighbor. But how far will David go to maintain his literary perch?
Pearl (The Last Bookaneer), wickedly witty in describing his compatriots, refers to writers as "domesticated dogs, easily suspicious just at the sight of each other for no particular reason." Luck, "a Cambridge writer's most coveted commodity," might be on David's side for a time, but in the end, it is Barnaby who turns out to be the perfect foil for the spectacular moral reckoning Pearl has in store for his cunning protagonist. --Shahina Piyarali