The Book of Ayn

Freiman follows up Inappropriation with more mischievous satire in this acerbic and affecting story of a canceled novelist who struggles to reinvent herself. After Anne’s novel of the opioid epidemic is labeled “classist” by the New York Times, given her relative privilege compared to the book’s characters, the criticisms spike online (“Twitter wanted to kill me,” she claims). As a result, she can no longer get published and loses her friends. After reading some of Ayn Rand’s objectivist writings, she embraces Rand’s philosophy of radical individualism and abandons the hostile New York City literary scene for Hollywood, determined to write a TV script. She meets a gorgeous young influencer who designs an animal avatar for her called Ayn Ram, and though the avatar goes viral, Anne can’t figure out how to create her Randian TV satire. Disillusioned, she joins an ego-killing meditation commune on a Greek island. Though long explanations of Rand’s ideologies grow wearisome, Freiman makes up for them with a slew of sly passages (“no one wanted to read Eat Pray Love narrated by Humbert Humbert,” Anne laments, torpedoing her idea for another book). There’s also depth to Anne, who wants to be a serious writer. Freiman’s portrait of a hapless artist is provocative and surprisingly moving. Susan Golomb at Writers House. (Nov.)