Dear Monica Lewinsky

For Jean Dornan, the protagonist of Langbein’s incandescent sophomore novel (after American Mermaid) whose life is still in shambles following a toxic relationship with her college professor almost two decades earlier, it feels like “#MeToo had come and gone like a parade two streets over.” The novel takes shape as Jean begins praying to Monica Lewinsky, “patron saint of those who suffer venal public shaming and patriarchal cruelty,” whose affair with Bill Clinton came to light in 1998, just as Jean was in the throes of her own infatuation. Amazingly, the glowing figure of Saint Monica appears to answer, leading Jean to reflect on the summer of her sophomore year at Rutgers, when she studied medieval art in rural France. Singled out by David, the professor leading the trip, Jean becomes as obsessed with his charm as he is smitten by her raw authenticity. But after their brief fling, she has a hard time not seeing herself through his eyes. Langbein packs the fierce and funny tale with weighty insights into female desire, ambition, and selfhood, making it a winning combination of comedy, critique, and fantasy. She also fully delivers on the audacious conceit, which begins with a head-turning prologue on Monica’s affair with “emperor” Bill Clinton: “Well, the emperor had many enemies, foremost among them a dogged Christian prosecutor named Kenneth.... [who] imagined that the emperor had all the sex that Kenneth denied himself, and so he decried the emperor loudly as a man with no virtue, unfit to be ruler of the Americans.” This is a revelation. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Apr.)