The Most

by Jessica Anthony

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

We love immersive books you can read in one sitting, and Jessica Anthony's novel of a housewife at her wits end packs a punch. The clever premise and unflinching narrative voice might remind you of The Swimmer by John Cheever.

From “one of our most thrilling and singular innovators on the page” (Laura Van Den Berg), a tightly wound, consuming tale about a 1950s American housewife who goes for a swim in her apartment complex’s swimming pool one morning...and won’t come out.
 
It’s November 3, 1957. As Sputnik 2 launches into space, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day. Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn’t particularly happy in his job but he fulfills the role. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion with a key shot up her sleeve, is now a mother and homemaker. On this unseasonably warm Sunday, Kathleen decides not to join her family at church. Instead, she unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the deserted swimming pool of their apartment complex in Newark, Delaware. And then she won’t come out.

A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most masterly breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316576376
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	3,106
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jessica Anthony is the author of three books of fiction, most recently the novel Enter the Aardvark, a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. A recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature, Anthony wrote The Most while guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge in Štúrovo, Slovakia. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/27/2024

Anthony (Enter the Aardvark) examines a fraying marriage in her sensational latest. Kathleen Beckett, a former college tennis champion, lives with her husband, Virgil, and two children in the suburbs of 1950s Newark, Del. One Sunday, Kathleen tells Virgil to take the children to church without her. The narrative spans the rest of the day and alternates between Kathleen’s and Virgil’s points of view, gradually revealing the sources of their tension. It turns out Virgil recently ended an affair with a woman named Imogene Monson, and, as the day progresses, Kathleen pieces together the truth while Virgil contends with Imogene’s attempt to win him back. Meanwhile, Virgil’s father digs up dirt on Kathleen, and hints to her that he knows about her affair with her high school tennis instructor. More juicy revelations and surprising twists ensue as Anthony unspools each spouse’s side of the story, and suspense mounts as the clock ticks toward their reunion at home. What makes this exceptional, however, are the distinctive details, such as a tennis strategy called “the most,” inspired by the bombing of a bridge in Czechoslovakia during WWI, in which a player lures their opponent toward the net and then hits a devastating passing shot. Readers won’t want to put this down. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (July)

Publishers Weekly

An exquisite, taut literary mousetrap—this is a tale of sport in every sense of the word, of game and play, winning and losing, strategy and choice. If the secret of jazz, our male protagonist’s hidden passion, is the notes they don’t play, then the secret of this aching novella is the words the characters don’t say to each other. Jessica Anthony’s writing is a thunderous, polyphonic music all its own.”—ALISSA NUTTING, author of MADE FOR LOVE and TAMPA

“Jessica Anthony’s The Most is a brilliant and startling domestic fable of longing. The novel captures a haunting unrest at the core of midcentury American life, treating its aimlessly striving characters with a stern caress of grace. The Most is a novel of ruthless beauty. I read it in one perfect sitting.”—ISLE MCELROY, author of PEOPLE COLLIDE

"The Most achieves the impossible: it says something new about marriage. In this thrilling novel, Anthony's genius for structural and chronological invention is grounded in sensory richness and the most vividly idiosyncratic characters I’ve encountered in a while. This is a 21st century literary classic waiting to happen.”—KATE CHRISTENSEN, author of THE GREAT MAN

“Sensational…exceptional…Readers won’t want to put this down.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review

“With Enter the Aardvark Jessica Anthony proved herself to be one of the most inventive writers working today. That book should have prepared me for her ingenious new novella, The Most, but somehow it didn’t. Trust me, though. The Most is a must.”—RICHARD RUSSO, author of EMPIRE FALLS and the NORTH BATH Trilogy

"The Most charges the air like a thunderclap when a married couple reckons with their past and the masks they hide behind. You will race to find out who they are and who they might become. Jessica Anthony’s riveting novel is stellar. She has quickly become one of my favorite writers."—TOMAS Q. MORIN, author of MACHETE

“Can the secrets and misdeeds of a marriage be survived?... Anthony’s sharply focused portrait of seemingly average lives in midcentury America reveals the complexities of those lives in the course of one balmy day. A novella packing all the imagery and storytelling power of a novel.”—KIRKUS, Starred Review

"A vaguely disenchanted midcentury housewife enters her swimming pool on a warm November day — and decides not to leave. A quick but psychologically acute read by the author of “Enter the Aardvark” with a vivid sense of time and place (not just the pool)."—BOSTON GLOBE

“With this seemingly small act of female rebellion, novelist Jessica Anthony leads us into the secret upheaval of marriage, good-girl American society, and a silenced female fury and ambition. Get ready, readers. The Most is exquisitely written, heady rush of story that you can—and probably will—finish in a few hours, before your sunscreen needs reapplying.”—OPRAH DAILY

“The Most blindsided me with its power….This superb short novel, about a marriage at its breakpoint, deserves to become a classic….Anthony has served an ace.”—HELLER MCALPIN, NPR.ORG

"Riveting"—PARADE

"The Most is darkly funny in its own way, and in the end is less a comedy than a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment.”—THE WASHINGTON POST

“A perfect little novel that feels like a classic American piece of literature…it is tight and funny and interesting, it has great playfulness and I think anybody who wants to read something different – this is for you!”—SUZANNA HERMANS from OBLONG BOOKS

“Distilling this novel down to just these elements misses its other dimensions, how it captures an anxiety both specific to its time and broadly relatable, how its narrator twists and diverts the story at will, and how in under 150 pages we are presented and taken through an incredibly nuanced conflict…. Jessica Anthony renders the pathos of older domestic dramas such as Revolutionary Road, but with an admirable economy of words and a creative omniscient narrator."—CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS

"In a story that could easily be seen as one-sided, Anthony chooses to give us more than two sides. Through her use of a relatively removed third-person narrator, we see not only Kathleen and Virgil’s pasts and present, but also their futures… This technique elevates The Most from a simple marriage story to a portrait of an era, a minute event firmly entrenched in a larger world.”—LIT HUB

From the Publisher

★ 2024-05-31
Can the secrets and misdeeds of a marriage be survived?

The events of an unseasonably warm Sunday in November provide the backdrop for Anthony’s short, no-holds-barred account of a crucial juncture in the married life of a young couple in 1950s Delaware. AsSputnik 2 and its crew—the doomed “space dog,” Laika—orbit the earth, Kathleen and Virgil Beckett are on a collision course of their own. While Virgil brings the couple’s two boys to church and looks forward to squeezing in one more late-season round of golf, Kathleen dons an old bathing suit and proceeds to their (somewhat depressing) apartment complex’s pool; the only unusual aspect of that sequence of events is Kathleen’s refusal to get out of the pool as the afternoon stretches into evening. Over the course of the day, Anthony deftly sketches out each character’s backstory and secrets. Virgil has relocated the family from Rhode Island to Newark, Delaware, for a fresh start and new job in the insurance industry in order to correct unacknowledged deficiencies (involving women and alcohol) in his behavior. Kathleen, who had been an accomplished college tennis player noted for her endurance, mulls over her past life and loves as she floats in the pool and decides upon the best tactic to employ in determining the future of her marriage. Complicating the couple’s relationship are external forces applied by parents, friends, and old (as well as fairly recent) lovers, but it will be up to Virgil and Kathleen to figure out how much to disclose to each other…once they’re on the same course. Anthony’s sharply focused portrait of seemingly average lives in midcentury America reveals the complexities of those lives in the course of one balmy day.

A novella packing all the imagery and storytelling power of a novel.

Kirkus Reviews