cover image A Hole in the Story

A Hole in the Story

Ken Kalfus. Milkweed, $26 (208p) ISBN 978-1-57131-575-5

In Kalfus’s resonant latest (after 2 A.M. in Little America), a political reporter reflects on the Clinton years during a present-day sexual harassment scandal. When Adam Zweig receives news that his former boss Max Lieberthol, a legend in the liberal establishment, has been “#MeToo’d,” he initially pleads ignorance to a reporter before reflecting back 30 years earlier, when he was a young staff writer at the magazine Next Deal under the charismatic Lieberthol’s stewardship. The accuser, Valerie Lovine, was a Next Deal freelancer at the time and a close friend of Adam’s. In flashbacks, Kalfus reveals that Valerie told Adam about the assault soon after it happened, and that Adam offered comfort but took no action against Max. Later, Adam and Valerie have a brief and awkward affair. As Adam considers the contemporaneous events of the Clinton-Lewinski scandal, he questions whether he was as enlightened about gender relations as he’d thought. The insights are subtle, as Kalfus writes with economical prose and avoids polemics even as Adam’s soul-searching leads to devastating honesty, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. This is sobering. Agent: Christy Fletcher, UTA. (Apr.)