When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein.

Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man.

Reminiscent at points of The Ginger Man but in the end a bright, original yarn with a surprising twist.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Frances is a whirlwind, not a person to observe the rules: When the real estate agent says his fee will be 30 percent, nonnegotiable, she negotiates: “If you name another figure that is not fifteen percent, I will go to fourteen percent…and on down the line until your payment, and your sole function in regard to my own life, disappears altogether.” Their fate in Paris and en route is to meet unlikely people, like one Boris Maurus, whose moniker prompts Malcolm to remark, with unusual insight, “We both have horror movie names,” and the footloose Mme Reynard, who disappoints Frances by being rather affable and unstylish rather than offering a foil for “a night of implied insults and needling insinuations.” Sometimes it seems like the most grown-up character in the novel is the cat, Small Frank, and in any event Paris is not always a picnic, as when Malcolm and Frances observe a knot of cops beating up a demonstration of étrangers: “They moved through the pack knocking down the immigrants one after the other a tap on the skull and on to the next.” Such sharply observed moments give deWitt’s well-written novel more depth than the usual comedy of manners-a depth reinforced by the exit that closes the tale, sharp object and all. No, she’s not cooking, says Maman: “I only like the sound it makes.” Frances and Malcolm are sensual creatures, she a “moneyed, striking woman of sixty-five years,” he “broody and unkempt.” Now, suddenly broke, Frances decides to sell what she can and bolt to Paris, Malcolm in tow. “They’re not normal people”: an entertaining romp among the disaffected bourgeoisie.Įarly in the pages of deWitt’s ( Undermajordomo Minor, 2015, etc.) latest, the shiftless son of Frances Price-a meaningful name, that-wanders into the family's Manhattan kitchen to find his mother wielding a “long, gleaming knife.” Having never seen her cook, Malcolm is puzzled.

French Exit by Patrick deWitt