Good Company

In the nuanced if slow-paced latest from Christensen (The Great Man), a novelist returns to her alma mater for a book festival, where she reckons with her history of dysfunctional relationships. Julia Heimdahl, now in her 50s, is promoting a memoir about her sexual history with men and women, including her happy new relationship with a musician 20 years younger. She chalks up her rocky road to love to a misogynist father who physically abused her mother, Leni, and to Leni, who competed with her and her sisters for attention from men. At the festival, Julia is paired on a panel with biographer Ellis Blackwell, a charming Southerner who’s written a memoir about his own troubled family. Over the weekend, Julia has a series of uncomfortable run-ins with, among others, a woman she was attracted to in college who now publicly accuses Julia of “internalized misogyny,” multiple friends-turned-enemies who ostracized her after she cheated on her husband, and a former student of hers who is investigating Blackwell’s behavior with his former students. As the people in her life cross paths, Julia grapples with how well she really understands her own story. Christensen includes passages from the memoir, which lend context to who Julia is now, but sap the momentum. Still, Julia’s complex characterization will stay with readers. (June)