Historians may look back at our time and call it the Age of Apology: politicians, sports stars and entertainers have all had to choke out reluctant mea culpas to save a career or an endorsement contract. In his sixth novel, A Thousand Pardons, Jonathan Dee cleverly explores this phenomenon, mostly through the eyes of a victim whose life has been blown apart by her husband's misbehavior and who must find her way to forgiveness.
In a single misbegotten evening whose highlights include a clumsy sexual advance on a summer associate at his New York law firm and an arrest for drunk driving, Ben Armstead spectacularly applies a torch to both his legal career and his foundering marriage. Attempting to flee the "mushroom cloud over her happy home environment" and avoid financial ruin, his wife, Helen, lands a position at a nondescript public relations firm. When her singular talent--a knack for getting miscreants to offer sincere apologies for their wrongdoing--brings a parade of clients through the door, she finds herself with a burgeoning career. But Helen's skill at what she calls "apology wrangling" doesn't translate into an ability to connect with her sullen teenage daughter, adopted from South Korea, or to understand her husband's halting attempts to salvage something out of the wreckage of their relationship.
Helen's biggest challenge arrives when she's thrust into a manic effort to unravel a PR disaster created by Hamilton Barth, a controversial actor with serious self-esteem problems with whom she'd grown up in a small town in upstate New York. In desperation, she enlists Ben in the effort to keep Barth out of the rapacious media spotlight, sparking at least a glimmer of hope that their relationship, though badly battered, hasn't been damaged beyond repair.
In this fast-moving, consistently entertaining story, Dee's depictions of his characters--all of whom are possessed of intelligence and wit, if not always the best judgment--never fall back on condescension. Without exactly ripping his story from the headlines, Dee (a Pulitzer finalist for The Privileges) pushes enough of the right buttons to evoke some of the more salacious or awkward recent scandals. If you read A Thousand Pardons, the next time you watch a disgraced public figure shuffle up to a bank of microphones, there's a good chance this coolly intelligent novel will spring to mind and you'll see with fresh eyes as that well-rehearsed scene plays out. --Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: Jonathan Dee's sixth novel is a smart, witty look at the rites of apology in contemporary America.