Well, as the saying goes it takes talent to recognize talent. By that logic does it make me a talented reviewer to recognize what a clever book Talent is? I love books, books about books, authors, etc. but primarily I read for pleasure. The protagonist of this book, and the main secondary character also for that matter, are two individuals who are also around books all day, but they utilize them in different ways. One, the 29 year old graduate student stuck on finishing her dissertation, dissects literature in search of meaning (or at least something worth of an essay) and the other makes a living binding and/or forging books. Both are connected through an author, who, popular once decades ago, published three books to some success and then walked away from it all. Anna sees him as just the subject to complete her thesis on the nature of inspiration, his niece is after his notebooks worth a decent amount of money. And so it’s a story (or even a satire) of academia primarily and the plot revolves around this preppy proper tweed world of pretense and ambition, but it really sparkles when it comes to tangential discourses. Talent, for me, is an ode to Nothing. Not nothing as in the opposite of something per se, but nothing as an alternative to the ambition driven life. Freddy Langley, the author, walked away from it all to a quiet life of thinking and drinking. Anna Brisker in a way dreams of it (her precise ideal life is that of professor emeritus, which is apparently more or less a comfortable sinecure) as she and the book contemplates just how foreign that idea is to an American mindset. Something about an idle life just goes offensively contrary to Puritanical mentality. Our culture is all about doing, careers, drives, possessions, joining the race, climbing the ladder and so on. No place for dreamers, contemplators or just anyone who isn’t particularly good at life. No one pauses to enjoy the small things. Nothing as a state of stillness and quietude goes dramatically unappreciated. Mind you, Freddy Langley did nothing on his and then his friends and then his brother’s dime and Anna can afford to do nothing on her dead grandfather’s inheritance, but still…as a concept it’s nice to read about. The other thing this book contemplates well is, as you’d imagine with Anna’s thesis, the nature of inspiration and talent. Very interesting, much food for thought on both accounts. And all that aside, it’s just a very entertaining book, advertised as wickedly funny, it was for me more on the darkly humorous side stemming from the genuine cleverness of the narrative. Lapidos with degrees in English and comparative literature really knows her material, the observations on the nature of literary criticism, the way it anatomizes and studies its subjects, the works of substance and originality, to produce something that is neither and a mere theory or speculation at best, rendering the primary source as just a user database, thus depriving books of their very soul…it’s poignant and smart and so well observed. You might not care for the books’ characters, Anna alone is the very embodiment of white privilege, subsisting on poptarts and desperation, but her obsession with Langley and his work still spirals into a very compelling journey. And Langley can be perceived as a man who never got past resentment of his father. And the ending may be considered as lacking finality. But essentially, there’s just too much to enjoy about this book and the terrific writing to compensate for whatever personal likes of dislikes you might have of its denizens. Most auspicious for a debut. Very enjoyable genuinely smart read. And, unlike this rambling review, appealingly succinct. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.