39

In the course of a year, with the ominous sense that everything good (democracy, youth, romance!) is gone, three friendships unravel over sex, jealousy, and deceit. What, if anything, can mend them? 39 is a desperate age, a wild novel, and a smudged mirror of modern life.

Corinne, Lucas, and Nora have known each other a long while. As bunkmates: Corinne and Nora at camp. Roommates: after college. Lovers: Lucas and Nora in high school, and then again a few years later. Editors: of each other’s art and emails. Friends: the whole time, almost . . .

Corinne wants to have a baby with her playful, yet fickle, husband, but they can’t stop fighting. It’s almost as if she has a child already. Nora is about to marry her handsome Russian aristocrat boyfriend—the only problem is her unrelenting urge to sext her ex. Lucas, seeking a thrill or at least a change, thinks an election-night orgy might do the trick. That or a hair transplant.

These friends enter their fourth decade with their relationships crumbling and their fertility dwindling. They covet wealth and real estate, break up marriages, and succumb to half-assed seductions, all while fantasizing about being good people.

As the trio fixates on what was and what could still be, we bear witness to the familiar fragility of the ego and the endless yearning of the heart. With the same wit, honesty, and compassion that distinguished her as a Granta Best Young American Novelist, Rachel B. Glaser explores the vanity and apathy, passion and inaction, in a not quite but almost still-young life. 39 transports us through moments of ecstasy and anxiety to a bold new understanding of being alive.