THE VEGAN, by Andrew LipsteinWe should all be feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote, and at this point in climate change, we should probably also all be vegans (at least for part of the week).
But in Andrew Lipstein’s ingenious second novel, avoiding meat and dairy is a sign that something has gone seriously wrong.
Sort of like when Rosemary Woodhouse found herself nibbling on a raw chicken heart, part of the mounting evidence she was pregnant with Satan’s child, but in reverse.
Like “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Vegan” features young marrieds mulling conception and living in a highly desirable part of New York City — then, a four-room apartment in a Victorian building on the West Side of Manhattan; now, a brick townhouse in Cobble Hill— and a dinner party where a guest is effectively roofied.
Only here the perpetrator is the protagonist, one Herschel Caine (which, were you to consult a naming dictionary, translates roughly to “deer killer”): partner at a quantitative hedge fund, with $2.8 million in his bank account, growing qualms about his line of work and a keep-up-with-the-Joneses anxiety about his neighbors, one of whom is a Guggenheim.
Persons:
Andrew Lipstein, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Andrew Lipstein’s, Rosemary Woodhouse, nibbling, New York City —, Herschel Caine
Organizations:
Guggenheim
Locations:
New York City, Manhattan, Cobble