A terrifically well-written book about the perils of selling one's soul for a job. The young protagonist takes on a challenging position editing the slush pile at a mysterious publishing house. Soon enough he finds himself with a manuscript about the two most famous communists, the Rosenbergs, which turns Ethel Rosenberg into the titular Vixen. He resists, but is told the book needs to be released to save the publishing house from bankruptcy, and reluctantly takes on the project. He's not doing it to save the company, though - he wants his job.
Mysteries abound and I found it hard to put the book down, but I was relieved when it came to the end. For one thing, the main character is a hopelessly self-centred neurotic. The whining about everything and self-pity may have been supposed to be funny, but much as in Woody Allen's neurotic male characters, it simply became irritating. And hey, it's another take on how men want to have sex with anything that's female, no matter how inappropriate it might be, or how ridiculous it all seems.
Just once I'd like to see a story where the male and female characters can be colleagues without feeling the need to leap into a nearby bush. Simon Putnam, in particular, seems like such a flaccid character all the lust seems impossible. Who would want to have sex with him, anyway? He's a total drip.
This aside, the plot spins out of control, even in Francine Prose's expert hands. She writes beautifully, and that's why I picked up the book in the first place, bonded endlessly as I am to her other book about "Reading like a Writer", and her columns for the NYRB. Unfortunately, the last few chapters feel tacked on, as if in response to an editor saying, "But what happened to...?" I'm all for a good epilogue but these several short chapters added nothing, really, and just took away from the actual end of the story.
So, sadly disappointed.
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Very boring annoying book. Should have dumped way before the end. Happy to discard. ( )

DNF at 20%.

In June 1953, the federal government executes Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving atomic weapons secrets to the Soviets. Probably few families take the news harder than the Putnams, a Coney Island family, Jewish despite the name. Simon, the only child, worries about his mother, who grew up with Ethel and suffers debilitating migraines, possibly because of the political and cultural atmosphere.

With Joseph McCarthy riding high and roughshod over civil liberties, due process, and common decency, conformity means safety. You never know who will attack you, or why, only that suspicion, fear, and paranoia have gripped the country. That’s enough to give any sober citizen headaches.

Young Simon wangles an entry-level job at a Manhattan publisher through a family connection. His assignment is to go through the “slush pile,” unsolicited submissions, and write rejection letters for them. Presumably, he’ll start to learn the business that way.

One manuscript, however, has been marked for greatness, and Simon is to edit it. Titled The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic, the novel portrays a thinly disguised Ethel Rosenberg as a sex-crazed Soviet agent who does her best to seduce her all-American nemesis and destroy the nation at the same time. Naturally, Simon’s appalled, doubly so when his boss swears him to secrecy and confides that The Vixen will save the company, known for producing literary masterpieces but now on the brink of financial ruin.

Prose’s novel, a trenchant satire about power, truth telling, and the 1950s reads like a psychological thriller once it gets going, with obvious yet unstated parallels to the present day. Our hero never knows what’s true or not, or what consequences the lies might have. And his life is based on lies. As a Jew at a white-shoe firm, he’s trying to pass. His boss, Warren Landry, a charismatic, narcissistic, vicious bully and womanizer, repels Simon to the core, yet the younger man envies the elder for his power and sense of command. Warren also offers drama and force, commodities that Simon can only wish he understood.
In that larger-than-life atmosphere of deceit and power plays, Simon knows he’s out of his depth, yet can’t help himself. The author of the book he’s supposed to edit, the beautiful, seductive Anya Partridge, lives in a low-security mental-health facility, which tells him something but not enough. She also seems to wish to do everything except talk about her book.

Consequently, the ground under Simon’s feet constantly shifts, and whenever he tries to find out the truth, his informants talk out of both sides of their mouths. He wants to do the right thing, whatever that is, yet to keep his job, all while trying to look as though he knows what he’s doing. After all, everyone else seems to.

I wish that Simon were less of a nebbish, that brand of ineffectuality that makes you want to shake him. Also, at times, it’s hard to know whether the novel intends parody or realism, particularly concerning his lustful interests, which seem rather easily engaged, even repellent. Warren, however, is all too real and gives me shivers; I used to work for a publisher who shared a few of his character traits and political views. What a horrible time of my life.

Without giving anything away, I can tell you that Prose has re-created an era when the most outlandish theories gained credence, and intelligent, thoughtful people had to wonder who was minding the store, and to what end. I’m sure she intends that as a window on our current mess. Maybe too she’s asking how it is that the Rosenbergs were called traitors and executed, whereas the insurgents who stormed the capital are somehow judged either garden-variety vandals or heroes exercising their constitutional rights.

The Vixen stretches credibility in a few places but remains a compelling, provocative novel. ( )

A strange, complex, interesting book. ( )