The Cave Dwellers

by Christina McDowell Narrated by Madeleine Maby

Overview

This “delicious take on the one percent in our nation's capital” (Town & Country) and clever combination of The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Nest explores what Washington, DC's high society members do behind the closed doors of their stately homes.

They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book-a discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt's social secretary. Their aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington-generation after generation. Their old money and manner lurk through the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, Kalorama, and Capitol Hill. They only socialize within their inner circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. These parents and their children live in gilded existences of power and privilege.

But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question in this unputdownable novel that “combines social satire with moral outrage to offer a masterfully crafted, absorbing read that can simply entertain on one level and provoke reasoned discourse on another” (Booklist, starred review).

Editorial Reviews

JULY 2021 - AudioFile

Madeleine Maby narrates this layered satirical novel with a strong sense of story and a fine ability to get inside her characters’ psyches. Her emulations of Washington, DC’s, powerful and power hungry are nuanced. Her performance reveals the vapid sound of the social climber and the angst of the teenager. The novel is fast paced. Author McDowell draws on her own experience of scandal; her father ended up in prison for fraud. “The cave dwellers”—those with old money and old mansions, the elite of the elite—live uptown existences that events—murder, suicide, and corruption at the highest levels—upend. The story is well researched and packed with careful descriptions of a way of life replete with BOTOX, Hermès scarves, and secret clubs. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

03/15/2021

McDowell’s mordant debut novel (following the memoir After Perfect) sends up the Washington, D.C., establishment. The torture and murder of Texas oil scion David Banks and his family sets off shock waves among teenage daughter Audrey’s classmates and their families. Bunny Bartholomew’s industrialist father is being sued for dumping chemicals, and her callous, blue-blooded mother wonders if the Banks murders were “divine intervention” after their new money made them social competitors with the Bartholomews. The son of an Army general who’s under investigation for his role in alleged war crimes lets himself be waterboarded with champagne (and filmed) at a party, while elsewhere a senator chases off his daughter’s Black boyfriend with a gun after catching them naked together, also captured on camera. Meanwhile, Bunny begins visiting the man charged with the murders, former Banks employee Anthony Tell, who is Black, claims his innocence, and is held without bail. As Bunny becomes overwhelmed by guilt about her white privilege, her effort to help Anthony and uncover the truth adds to the conflagration threatening to bring down all the families. While the drama is thick, the characters all hew closely to type (and to one another), with mothers bedecked in diamonds and Hermès scarves, and the fathers largely only distinguishable from one another by their professions and crimes. The flat characterizations don’t make for high literature, but the satire cuts deep. (May)

From the Publisher

After reading this ruthless satire of their behavior, [the Capital's oldest and wealthiest families] probably can’t sue for slander, but they might want to beg for mercy. . . . For its merciless humor and brazen exposure of salon secrets, The Cave Dwellers should join that small collection of essential Washington books. . . . After all, this is an author who knows her victims’ antique attitudes and traditions as well as Marjorie Merriweather Post knew her china settings.” —The Washington Post

"Through blunt caricatures and sharp characterizations, McDowell...combines social satire with moral outrage to offer a masterfully crafted, absorbing read that can simply entertain on one level and provoke reasoned discourse on another."
—Booklist (starred review)

“McDowell’s mordant debut novel sends up the Washington, D.C., establishment. . . the drama is thick . . . the satire cuts deep.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Sharp, observant... The book is part comedy of manners, part cautionary tale, and part insiders-guide to the secret codes of power, but however you look at it, it's a delicious take on the one percent in our nation's capital.”
—Town & Country, “The 42 Must-Read Books of Spring 2021”

“Christina McDowell has written a delicious, cunningly plotted page-turner about my former home, Washington, D.C. She nails all kinds of insider nostrums, lies, handbags, tacky earrings, sexual predation, private clubs, teenage nihilism and most revealingly, racism, as only the elite can practice it at its most virulent. She’s a huge talent with a huge heart.”
—Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor and The Room and the Chair

“The Cave Dwellers is a provocative and extraordinary tale of family legacy, racism, classism and greed. In scathing prose, McDowell’s writing is as addictive as it is powerful. Love this book, and it’s still lingering in my mind weeks after reading it.”
—James Frey, New York Times bestselling author of A Million Little Pieces

“Can't get enough of the weirdness that is Washington! In this bold novel, McDowell uses a wild group of teenagers in Georgetown/Kalorama/Capitol Hill, (Yes, the places where the Obamas, the Kushners, and Jeff Bezos reside), to probe the privileged inner circle of their families, exposing the stupidity and failures of character of these dynastic swamp dwellers, nouveau-riche social climbers, womanizing, lying politicos—and nobody comes off well. The mystery surrounding the shocking murder of one family (based on a real event) deepens the darkness.”
—Lisa Howorth, author of Summerlings

“Racism, misogyny, and class hierarchy are all fair game, and the irony is inescapable and delicious. . . . A fascinating, gossipy glimpse into the lives of the one percent (with footnotes) that should appeal to readers who enjoyed The Assistants, by Camille Perri, or Capital Girls, by Ella Monroe.” —Library Journal

“Could be the most delicious Washington novel in recent memory . . . keenly observed, compelling . . . the novel uses a scalpel where others might deploy a hatchet . . . The Cave Dwellers would be a page turner no matter when it was released, but in today’s climate . . . it practically qualifies as required reading.” —Town & Country Magazine

"Author Christina McDowell...is back with her unputdownable debut novel, where the aristocratic bloodlines of Washington, D.C.'s high society—the Cave Dwellers—are forced to reconcile with the changing world around them when one of their own is brutally murdered." —Veranda

Library Journal

05/07/2021

DEBUT NOVEL McDowell's fiction debut (following a memoir, After Perfect) is a brutal, satirical look at life in Washington, DC, and the author knows whereof she speaks; she grew up there. The catalyst for the story is the torture and brutal murder of a wealthy, power-wielding white family, including their teenage daughter. One of her classmates is determined to get to some sort of understanding of what happened and why, and she goes to the jail to visit the young Black man who has been arrested for the crime. It turns out his father was an employee of the family who were killed, and motive is quickly established. The wives of the most powerful families in the nation's capital are all perturbed, but so are their teenage children, the private school classmates of the murdered girl. These are among the most privileged families in the country, and the satire here is deeply wounding; racism, misogyny, and class hierarchy are all fair game, and the irony is inescapable and delicious. VERDICT A fascinating, gossipy glimpse into the lives of the one percent (with footnotes) that should appeal to readers who enjoyed The Assistants, by Camille Perri, or Capital Girls, by Ella Monroe.—Stacy Alesi, Eugene M. & Christine E. Lynn Lib., Lynn Univ., Boca Raton, FL

JULY 2021 - AudioFile

Madeleine Maby narrates this layered satirical novel with a strong sense of story and a fine ability to get inside her characters’ psyches. Her emulations of Washington, DC’s, powerful and power hungry are nuanced. Her performance reveals the vapid sound of the social climber and the angst of the teenager. The novel is fast paced. Author McDowell draws on her own experience of scandal; her father ended up in prison for fraud. “The cave dwellers”—those with old money and old mansions, the elite of the elite—live uptown existences that events—murder, suicide, and corruption at the highest levels—upend. The story is well researched and packed with careful descriptions of a way of life replete with BOTOX, Hermès scarves, and secret clubs. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177130354
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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