You Should Have Known Hardcover – March 18, 2014

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From Publishers Weekly ---------------------- Starred Review. This excellent literary mystery by the author of 2009's Admission unfolds with authentic detail in a rarified contemporary Manhattan. Therapist Grace Reinhart Sachs is about to embark on a publicity blitz to promote her buzzed-about book on why relationships fail, You Should Have Known. In the meantime, she cares for her 12-year-old son, Henry, who attends the same private school she went to as a child. Grace also treasures her loving relationship with her longtime husband Jonathan, a pediatric cancer doctor at a prestigious hospital. The novel's first third offers readers an authoritative glimpse into the busy-but-leisurely lives of private-school moms. Grace does her best to get along with the school's vapid and catty fundraising committee. She eventually learns that one of the mothers outside her social strata, Malaga Alves, was found murdered in her apartment by her young son. Grace, already tense and sad from these events, becomes more and more anxious as Jonathan, at a medical conference in the Midwest, proves unreachable over several days. The author deftly places the reader in Grace's shoes by exploring her isolation, unease, and contempt for the rumor mill. The plot borders on hyperbole when it comes to upending what we know about one character, but that doesn't take much away from this intriguing and beautiful book. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment. (Mar. 2014) Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) From Booklist ( /gp/feature.html/?docId=1000027801 ) ---------------------------------------------------- There is an exquisite but excruciating irony in the fact that Grace’s marriage is imploding. The successful Manhattan couples therapist is just about to start the PR blitz for her first book, one that examines the tell-tale, “he’s not right for you” signs that, caught early enough, can prevent shaky relationships from becoming emotional earthquakes. Mired in the media whirlwind while working on a fundraiser for her son’s tony private school, Grace is only peripherally aware that her husband, charismatic pediatric oncologist Jonathan, is characteristically but frustratingly incommunicado. Then when one of her committee associates is found brutally murdered the same time Jonathan drops off the radar screen, Grace slowly learns that everything she thought she knew about the man she married is blatantly false. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, Korelitz’s stinging deconstruction of this marital facade simultaneously reveals the inexorable lies about Grace’s supposedly ideal mate. Sensitively delving into the intricacies of self-deception, Korelitz (The White Rose, 2005) delivers a smart and unsettling psychological drama. --Carol Hag Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) Review ------ "This excellent literary mystery [unfolds] with authentic detail in a rarified contemporary Manhattan. . . intriguing and beautiful."―Publishers Weekly (starred review) "An old-fashioned novelist in the best sense, Korelitz takes a subject of consuming contemporary interest and uses it to frame a portrait of a wonderfully complex character confronting the choices she's made and the damage she's done, mostly to herself...Sensitively excavating Portia's personal history, Korelitz stirs compassion for this caring, self-doubting woman. She populates the book with three-dimensional characters who spotlight the obstacles thrown in Portia's path and the helping hands she's been unable to grasp...Well-written, well-plotted and extremely satisfying, "Admission" marks another step forward for a writer whose accomplishments grow more impressive with each book." (Praise for Admission)―Los Angeles Times "...Jean Hanff Korelitz's compulsively readable new novel...At 449 pages, it's a doorstop-worthy tome. But unlike the painful process of waiting for that acceptance (or, God forbid, rejection) letter, Admission seldom drags...And Admission is that rare thing in a novel: both juicy and literary, a genuinely smart read with a human, beating heart." (Praise for Admission)―Entertainment Weekly "That Korelitz has previously produced a thriller or two is evident in the sublimely paced plotting of this sharply observed and written novel...[Korelitz] knows her stuff. Better yet, she knows how to tell a story." (Praise for Admission)―The Atlantic "Intriguing...Yes, there's a crime, but it's the human mystery that keeps us turning the pages."―Alice Hoffman, author of The Marriage of sites Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) About the Author ---------------- Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York and graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of one book of poems, THE PROPERTIES OF BREATH, and three previous novels, A JURY OF HER PEERS, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER and THE WHITE ROSE, as well as a novel for children, INTERFERENCE POWDER. She has also published essays in the anthologies MODERN LOVE and BECAUSE I SAID SO, and in the magazines VOGUE, REAL SIMPLE, MORE, NEWSWEEK, STYLE, TRAVEL AND LEISURE (FAMILY) and others. She lives in New York City with her husband (Irish poet Paul Muldoon, poetry editor at The New Yorker and Princeton poetry professor) and two children. Read more ( javascript:void(0) )