Lucky readers have not had to wait long for Idra Novey to follow up her playful and vulnerable Ways to Disappear with a novel equally tight and captivating. Those Who Knew, like its predecessor, clocks in well under 300 pages, and goes to show that Novey wields considerable strength in crafting high-suspense complexity in lean, literary prose.Shortly after Maria P., a student activist, was killed by an oncoming bus, Lena, a college instructor in an unnamed country, discovers the woman's black sweater in her tote. She hands it off, but minutes later "it was back, bunched up again inside her bag." This obstinate garment isn't the only thing Lena has in common with Maria P.; both held the affections of Victor, a force of the nation's progressive politics.
"The young senator, with his ardent eloquence and intense gaze, has become a darling of the age group least likely to vote... [leading] to predictions of an easy bid for reelection." He is also a man whose ambitions have repeatedly and substantially taxed the women around him. With the sweater as her mantle, Lena sets herself on a collision course with a history she might have preferred to remain buried.
The skeleton is familiar enough: an influential man transgresses against a woman--or several--but must remain untouched because his downfall would be too costly for everyone. It rattles through the contemporary moment as insidiously as in the early '90s, when Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment and Joyce Carol Oates published Black Water, which echoes a 1969 scandal about a woman who died in a powerful senator's car.
But rather than run cold with didacticism, Novey exercises her considerable talents in crafting lush, riveting threads, which she braids into a spectacular crime novel. As Lena grapples with her past and attempts to uncover what really happened to Maria P., competing narratives crowd together over the ensuing years, each offering a fresh take on the events in question. Victor's brother, Freddy, a playwright, mines his family life for material and brings these veiled truths to life on the stage. And as the knots in these threads tighten, it becomes apparent that what seems like an isolated incident is usually anything but.
There may be an impulse to pin this story to a modern moment, a prominent movement of reckoning for men of intimidating and violent machinations. Those Who Knew, however, serves to remind readers that those who have known know now, as they did then and before then. Although the plight is timeworn, Novey renders it with fresh vigor and keen insight. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: In Idra Novey's compelling second novel, a woman scrutinizes the death of a student activist and their similar experiences with a prominent senator.