Don’t Be a Stranger

Minot’s lilting if myopic latest (after the collection Why I Don’t Write) revolves around a Manhattanite mother obsessed with a handsome younger man. Ivy, a divorced writer in her early 50s, is raising her third-grader son, Nicky, mostly on her own. After she meets and falls for Ansel Fleming, an enigmatic ex-con musician two decades her junior, the novel jumps from one of their trysts to the next, chronicling Ivy’s mounting preoccupation with her new lover. Their encounters are sporadic, so Ivy waits and broods, while caring for the ever-perceptive Nicky, who’s desperately trying to navigate his parents’ separation. But Nicky’s father is in Virginia, and Ivy is exhausted and vulnerable from managing life by herself. The reader gets only Ivy’s side of the affair, and it isn’t long before taciturn, self-absorbed Ansel begins to look like a bona fide jerk, and Ivy like a fool. As in Minot’s previous novels, sex is portrayed as a means of transcendence. The prose is often poetic, but the purportedly transportive nature of Ivy’s lovemaking with Ansel tends to strain credulity. For a tale of unrequited obsession, the tone is appropriately melancholic, if a bit too one-note. There are glimmers of Minot’s great early work, but this doesn’t scale the same heights. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (Oct.)