The Most: A wickedly sharp, tensely coiled portrait of a 1950s suburban marriage
Jessica Anthony
From 'one of our most thrilling and singular innovators on the page' (Laura Van Den Berg), a tightly wound, consuming tale about a 1950s American housewife, for fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen and Taffy Brodesser-Akner
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2024
A Barnes & Noble BEST BOOK of 2024
COSMOPOLITAN Novella of the Year 2024
'Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story.' - Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing
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A warm Sunday in November 1957. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day.
Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn’t particularly happy in his job but he fulfils the role, playing golf with the partners, drinking in the bar, chasing the women. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion, with a key shot up her sleeve called ‘The Most’, is now a mother and homemaker.
Somehow these two, who have been together since college, have fallen into the roles expected of them – the prescribed suburban dream they have been sold as something to covet, something that will fulfil their lives. But on this unseasonably warm, early November Sunday, Kathleen wakes up and decides that she will not be accompanying her family to church.
No, she feels like a swim.
She unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the apartment complex pool no other resident uses. And she doesn’t want to come out…
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Praise for Jessica Anthony's ENTER THE AARDVARK
'A truly fresh piece of art' Percival Everett
'Fresh, witty, smart' Kate Atkinson
'Highly inventive' Joshua Ferris
'A writer possessed of mind-bending talents' Heidi Julavits
Product Details
About Jessica Anthony
Reviews for The Most: A wickedly sharp, tensely coiled portrait of a 1950s suburban marriage
Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing
Delivers on page-turning interior secrets
Observer
In just 144 pages Anthony manages to convey the stifling atmosphere for women in the 1950s through the simple story of a housewife who chooses not to go to church that day and instead spends all her time in an unloved swimming pool, which she refuses to leave.
Cosmopolitan, 'Best Novella of 2024'
Sensational ... Readers won't want to put this down.
Publishers Weekly
A fascinating, elegant read where not a single word is wasted
My Weekly
With this seemingly small act of female rebellion, novelist Jessica Anthony leads us into the secret upheaval of marriage, good-girl American society, and a silenced female fury and ambition. Get ready, readers. The Most is an exquisitely written, heady rush of story.
OPRAH DAILY
Jessica Anthony’s The Most is a brilliant and startling domestic fable of longing… The Most is a novel of ruthless beauty. I read it in one perfect sitting.
Isle McElroy, author of People Collide
One of the most inventive writers working today
Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
Jessica Anthony's spare, elegant novella... is darkly funny in its own way, and in the end is less a comedy than a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment.
Washington Post
An exquisite, taut literary mousetrap
Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love