Fake Plastic Love

With sweeping nods to Fitzgerald and other writers of the Gilded Age, Tait’s debut novel sparkles with vitality and conscience. Observant, contemplative, and witty M. takes center stage as the lives of four 20-somethings unfold. Postcollege, M. takes a job as an analyst at the prestigious Bartholomew Brothers banking firm in New York, becoming the banker her mother wishes she would marry. M.’s college best friend, Belle Bailey, also calls New York home, documenting her hopelessly romantic, rose-colored-glasses view of the world in her überpopular blog, La Belle Vie. She’s created the illusion of her life as pretty and perfect, a façade at odds with an uncertain reality and the pain of a tragedy she can never escape. Belle’s sometime beau, boorish Chase Breckenridge, works alongside M. and is a thorn in her side. Jeremy Kirby, M.’s closest work colleague, is a man in the wrong era, a Victrola in a world of MP3s. He becomes Belle’s ardent suitor, and M. gets caught in the middle, torn between protecting Jeremy and humoring Belle. As the years progress, so does the disillusionment the characters feel about their current realities; struggling to make sense of their presents and wondering what they want for their futures. Fluid, graceful, and unfaltering prose highlights this remarkable novel; relatable characters and themes complete the package. (May)