The Vegan

May 1, 2023
Having probed the ethics of fiction writing in Last Resort, Lipstein turns to another industry known for its occasionally elastic principles—high finance—in this engrossing portrait of a hedge fund manager. Narrator Herschel Caine is trying to establish a quantitative fund with the potential to “upend the very definitions of public stocks, investing, money itself.” To do so, he needs a large commitment from an investor whose shady representative wants access to the firm’s proprietary algorithm and is willing to deploy increasingly aggressive means to obtain it. Before the deal is resolved, domestic trouble ensues when Herschel and his wife, Franny, host their neighbors the Guggenheims for dinner but, the boisterous behavior of another guest threatens to spoil the evening. Herschel devises an underhanded solution to save the party, which leads to a serious accident. Against a Succession-level aftermath of corporate skullduggery and personal guilt, Herschel has a moral crisis; he grows horrified by the vast power of his firm’s algorithm, argues that art should have a social purpose, and becomes a vegan. As his worldview changes, language becomes alien to him: “Words and logic could not help me describe myself.” Though the denouement is a little rushed, there’s genuine suspense in Lipstein’s meaty novel of ideas. This is well worth the investment.

May 15, 2023
A hedge fund manager on the brink of astronomical financial success develops a sudden connection to animals. Herschel Caine is a young Jewish Brooklynite with nearly $3 million in the bank. He's the manager of a new quantitative hedge fund that has the potential to be game changing not just for his own wallet, but for the entire world of finance. But first the fund needs investors. That's Herschel's job, and he's not having a lot of luck. Nevertheless, he's optimistic one late spring night when he and his wife, Franny, host a dinner party at their Cobble Hill brownstone. But when the night ends in tragedy, Herschel's whole life begins to unravel. He begins to develop hyperempathy with animals--he can't tolerate even wearing leather or drinking milk in his coffee. Then there's the plum investor Herschel's courting who sends Ian, a mysterious and increasingly aggressive emissary, to meetings. Just as the hedge fund seems on the brink of a massive--and potentially illegal--breakthrough, Herschel finds himself unbearably vulnerable: to the machine of his career, to Ian's manipulations, and, above all, to his guilty conscience. This is Lipstein's second novel to feature pre-middle-aged men behaving badly, but where Last Resort (2022) tackled ethical gray areas in the world of publishing, Lipstein here sets his sights on finance. And while this may seem a more obvious place to explore the kind of moral conundrums Lipstein likes, this new novel uses juxtaposition to surprising effect: philosophy mixes with financial thriller, high capitalism with animalia. But things are never as dissimilar as they first seem--sometimes, the book says, when our lives and beliefs bend so far, they can ultimately make a full circle. A topsy-turvy investigation of that most disorienting question: What does it mean to be a good person?

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