Award-winning author Mary Gordon’s Payback is a searing story of sexual assault, decades before #MeToo, and how the response to a cry for help and blaming the victim changed two lives forever. Joining her is Mary Beth Keane, author of New York Times bestseller Ask Again, Yes, a story about another type of tragedy, one with consequences that reach across decades.
In Conversation: On Payback
In Conversation: On Payback
Author:
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Mary Beth Keane
Mary Beth Keane is the author of The Walking People, Fever, and most recently, Ask Again, Yes, which was an instant New York Times bestseller. Both Fever and Ask Again, Yes are in development to become limited television series. Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes (Scribner) is a novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness. Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses —the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne—sets the stage for the explosive events to come. Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Publishers Weekly called it “Thoughtful, compassionate… illustrates the mutability of memory and the softening effects of time… poignantly demonstrates how grace can emerge from forgiveness.”
Mary Gordon
Mary Gordon is the author of nine novels, including There Your Heart Lies, Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. In her novel Payback (Pantheon), she tells the story of Quin Archer, the revenge-loving queen of the reality-TV show PAYBACK. She was once an angry teen named Heidi. Her true story may be known only to Agnes, her art teacher at a private New England girls’ school in the 1970s. Agnes, then a young woman herself, suggests Heidi visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She returns with a disastrous account of having been picked up at the museum and assaulted by an older man. Agnes’s unsympathetic response will change both women’s lives. Gordon takes us through Heidi’s reinvention as Quin, and Agnes’s guilt and escape into career and family – until they meet again for Heidi’s payback. In a starred review Publishers Weekly called it “Excellent . . . Contrasts the 1970s world of upper-class women’s education with the #MeToo era . . . Gordon nails period details and vividly describes her characters’ worlds […]. This mesmerizing novel hits hard.”
