A Ladder to the Sky

Starred review from September 10, 2018
This evocative saga from Boyne (The Heart’s Invisible Furies) presents the Machiavellian literary success of Maurice Swift. In the late 1980s, Swift is an aspiring writer working as a waiter in West Berlin when he meets acclaimed author Erich Ackermann. Despite Swift’s inexperience, Ackermann is besotted by Swift’s beauty and coy sycophancy and employs him as his assistant. In a fruitless effort to win Swift’s affections, Ackermann entrusts him with his darkest secret: in 1939, information he gave SS officers led to the deaths of five people. Swift then uses Ackermann’s stories as the basis of a commercially successful novel, and to incriminate Ackermann. But Ackermann is just his first victim, and for the next 30 years, Swift’s ruthlessness flourishes as he manipulates others’ sexual desires and talents to further his literary career. Swift’s story spans the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day as his career’s demise is related from the perspectives of Ackermann; a fictionalized Gore Vidal; Swift’s wife, novelist Edith Camberley; and finally Swift himself. In his relentless pursuit of literary canonization, despite creative impotence, Swift is an enthralling yet profoundly disturbing protagonist. Boyne’s fast-paced, white-knuckle plot, accompanied by delightfully sardonic commentary on the ego, insecurities, and pitfalls of those involved in the literary world, makes for a truly engrossing experience. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment.

September 15, 2018
An all-consuming ambition to be a successful writer drives a young man down unusual paths to literary acclaim in this compelling character study.Boyne (The Heart's Invisible Furies, 2017, etc.) opens his 11th novel for adults with novelist Erich Ackermann, 66, telling how he was beguiled by the handsome young would-be writer Maurice Swift, at whose urging Ackermann reveals his early life in Nazi Germany and a terrible secret. The revelations become Swift's successful first novel, and Ackermann's career collapses as the young man stokes media attention by disclosing his source. Cut to the Amalfi Coast home of Gore Vidal and a third-person narrator describing Swift's visit with a different older gay writer. Vidal has some good sharp-edged lines as he concedes that the young man is well-read and a good writer, but he also finds him cruelly abusive to his latest mentor. What Vidal doesn't perceive is Swift's one glaring, possibly implausible shortcoming: He has no imagination for fiction, no good original ideas for a story. The tension rises as Boyne plays on the question of how far Swift will go for a winning idea. He is married in the next section, his second novel has flopped, and four more unassisted efforts were all rejected. Meanwhile his wife's fictional debut is well-received, and she feels her second novel will be even better. This leads to a chilling confrontation, made all the more so as Boyne reveals why the wife's narration addresses Swift as "you." Other horrors lie ahead. The question of comeuppance is long left unanswered. Boyne lightens the book's deep shadows and amorality with amusing jabs at the fame game behind literary life, with its blurbs and prizes, acolytes and endless envy.Boyne's singular villain and well-sustained tension merit a good audience.

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August 1, 2018

Aspiring writer Maurice Swift climbs that ladder to the sky by taking advantage of famed novelist Erich Ackermann, whom he encounters in a West Berlin hotel, and spinning Ackermann's secrets to the world. Now famous himself, Swift goes looking for more stories to spill. International best seller Boyne should get under Swift's skin, making us uneasy yet absorbed; already buzzing in the UK.

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