Superb, incendiary ... There are numerous ways to characterize this superb novel. It’s a bildungsroman that explores the dynamics of power, ambition, and sexuality with the pulse and complexity of an intricate thriller, in exquisite prose. Each sentence is diamond cut ... Buntin has outdone herself ... leases and provokes from every vantage point, but what is especially remarkable is Buntin’s audacity, her gutsy choices, and her clarity. She’s pumping her fist in the air, and we can hear her roar.
'What I’m trying to say is I understood what I was allowing to happen,' Wilhelmina Miles narrates in Julie Buntin’s second novel, Famous Men, moments before she follows the much older Nathaniel Fellow up to his apartment. In other words: It’s more complicated than it looks ... Is it ever, though? Reading Buntin’s magnificent, absorbing portrait of the ensuing, yearslong relationship between this 'great American writer' and his naïve, debt-laden employee feels like holding one of those lenticular 3-D baseball cards in your hand. From one angle the narrative invites murky, shades-of-gray interpretations of victimhood and consent, shame and ambition; but tilt the book a few degrees and the image of this age-chasm relationship is as black-and-white as they come ... The beauty in this novel is in how Buntin tells it ... This is a wickedly precise rendering of a young, self-destructive heroine worshiping at the altar of a false idol — and narrated in hindsight, from her later, more perspicacious vantage.
Is there a story writers love to tell more than the one about how we became ourselves? ... Julie Buntin’s sophomore novel, Famous Men, is an audacious entry into this canon ... It is a testament to Buntin’s skill that despite these familiar hallmarks, the dynamic between Will and Nathaniel feels original and consistently electric ... Famous Men sets up, and then subverts, our expectations of the artistic coming-of-age narrative.
Her gutsy, nuanced, and bravura take on the #MeToo novel remarkably portrays the queasy churn of our modern reckonings within one woman and the world at large, online and in life. As Will harnesses her own narrative, readers grasp along with her the audacity inherent in every story women tell about women, beginning with the idea they’re worth telling at all. Hers is a thrill to read and think about.
With a strong voice, engaging pace and compelling narrative, Julie Buntin’s Famous Men is an exceptional read ... In her sophomore novel, after Marlena, Buntin follows Will Miles, a young woman who is on a quest to discover who her father is and to leave her small town of Greening, Michigan, and find her own path in life ... Asks questions about men and abuses of power, but more than pursuing answers, it centers Will’s voice—which is pithy, wise and incisive.
Buntin’s premise may be familiar, but the novel pays masterful attention to complexity, presenting events and relationships in all their strangeness and contradictions. Her language is superb; for all Will’s self-assuredness, the precarity of her situation, tied so inextricably to Nathaniel, is rendered in such exacting and heartrending detail as to make the reader’s teeth ache. The structure of the novel allows for heightened poignancy as Will reflects on the consequences of the choices she made over the years, as well as the ones she didn’t. A searing, brilliant novel about power, and stories, and who gets to tell them.
Engrossing ... Thanks to Buntin’s clear-eyed look at her leads’ boundary-blurring relationship, the novel tells a complex story about how Nathaniel, at once majestic and pitiful, both expands and narrows Will’s world, trapping her in a personal and professional limbo. It’s a worthy addition to the post-#MeToo canon.
