TRADING PLACES
Canadian editor’s New York-set debut novel a wonderful success
The Futures Anna Pitoniak Lee Boudreaux Books
Said first with style by Peter De Vries, but made popular by Hemingway’s hallmark pith, “write drunk, edit sober” has become the beloved psalm — or salve, or indignant cry to leave it alone — of sauced-up ink slingers the world over. It’s phrase doing no favours to whichever red pen cleanup crew is responsible for prepping their work before print.
I don’t know where debut author Anna Pitoniak lands on De Vries’ logic, but if she’s employed it in any measure, the Random House editor has probably forgone more than a few productive mornings in sacrifice to her first book, The Futures. Good news: They were worth it.
Told in alternating POV, The Futures follows young Yale couple Julia and Evan in New York City as they take a crack of life after graduation. Julia, born on Boston’s least boondocks of blocks, arrives alongside boyfriend Evan without much in the way of employment or exit plan. Small-town British Columbia hockey export Evan has brought them both to the city with a job offer from prestigious hedge fund Spire, where family time and freedom will gradually become victim to the go-getter’s pursuit of an elite New York City lifestyle.
Julia lands herself an assistant gig and relies on Evan for two-thirds of their Upper East Side rent, but finances aren’t so much the couple’s problem as growing fractures in their relationship — an unsettling truth that’s unveiled slowly, skilfully and rings soundly throughout. A well-drawn (if not unsurprising) twist calls for additional character collateral and bumps up the story from simple couple’s quarrel to rounded Wall Street romp.
Aside from some minor missteps, the book delivers on its biggest ask — dispatching difficult truths from an urban post-grad jungle — and Pitoniak’s flair for language forgives any cliché she may toss out.
Her editor’s pen is worn with the patina of book publishing’s best lessons, punching up an engaging story with elegant language and cast of strong off-suit characters who temper the two-person narrative perfectly. Rotating points of view can be tricky, and often a little tiresome, but as my loyalty lurched between Julia and Evan throughout, it was clear that the approach did its job well here.
Without overplaying the millennial thing, Pitoniak infuses her book with its hallmarks: among the employed, a lingering sense of impostor syndrome and misplaced guilt; among the unemployed, stubborn listlessness served up with a little errant existentialism alongside.
Pitoniak’s honest portrayal honours both better-known and undertold truths of life after graduation, pairing a millennial’s go-to gripes ( job prospects, job security, a want of sympathy for either) with subtleties less seen in whatever clickbait column is irking Gen-Y today: late-game hormone hits, expectations at home, and maybe a want of sympathy for those things, too.
Whenever Pitoniak opts for humour it lands and could only be bettered with confidence and greater frequency. So small a cast puts dialogue at risk of lack of interest, but Julia and Evan have enough spoken — and unspoken — between them to keep pace.
Evan’s move from humble B.C. barn-burner to big city Brooks Brother is believable — an easy boon for local readers — and you’d hope so, really, since the migration more or less mirrors Whistlerborn Pitoniak’s own cross-border displacement. Pitoniak draws unexpected parallels between Evan’s sport and Spire’s stock, a clever angle that keeps repeated reference to either from reading stale.
It’s a charming story and a fine debut. Tightly told with enough sneak-up-on-you subplot to hold interest, The Futures needn’t wait long to realize its own professional prospects: this first crack proves Pitoniak may well see success giving her red pen a rest more often.