Set for Life

By: Andrew Ewell

Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins

Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

A “hilarious…hugely entertaining” (Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City) novel that captures the complexities of marriage, art, friendship, and the fictions we create in order to become the people we wish to be.

A creative writing professor at a third-tier college in upstate New York is on his way home from a summer fellowship in France, where he’s spent the last three months loafing around Bordeaux, tasting the many varieties of French wine at his disposal, and doing just about anything but actually working on his long overdue novel. A stopover in Brooklyn to see his and his wife’s closest friends—John, a jaded poet-turned-lawyer with a dubious moral compass, and Sophie, a once-promising fiction writer with a complicated past and a mysterious allure—causes further trouble when he and Sophie wind up sleeping together while John is out serenading Brooklyn coeds with poems instead of preparing legal briefs.

But instead of succumbing to his failures as a teacher, writer, and husband, an odd freedom begins to bubble up. Could a love affair be the answer he’s been searching for? Could it offer the escape he needs from the department chair, Chet Bland, who’s been breathing down his neck? Relief from the gossip of colleagues and generational tension with students? Respite from embarrassment with his wife, Debra Crawford, and her meteoric rise as a novelist? His escapades might even make the perfect raw material for an absolutely devastating novel, which would earn him tenure, wealth, and celebrity—everything he needs to be set for life. If only he could be the one to write it.

A brilliant case of art imitating life, Andrew Ewell’s “sharp, witty” (Richard Russo, author of Straight Man) debut is a poignant tour de force that asks who owns whose story, skewers the fictions created from our lives and others’, and brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “publish or perish.”

©2024 Andrew Ewell (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Writing Is More Difficult Than People Realize

Sean Patrick Hopkins does a fabulous job as the narrator of Andrew Ewell's debut novel, Set for Life, which centers an unnamed narrator who is failing at the miraculous task - despite the quantity of their existence - of writing a book. That failure weighs on him & to make himself feel better he makes a series of bad decisions & false promises. Beginning the decision to cheat on his wife, Debra, with Sophie, a close friend of theirs & wife to his friend, John.

What makes this narrator's descent, journey, path, whatever you want to call it, intriguing are the musings on the state of fiction, the idea of whether or not one is a good writer because they are published versus if they got published for being a good writer, the idea of the "Netflixication" of books as he sees what's for sale in places we know & love like The Strand.

The ethics, maybe even the lack thereof, of telling stories intrigues. I have a habit of telling my friends to write about their pain so they can profit from it, because if they won't then someone else who sees that your pain makes for an interesting story certainly will. While the narrator's indiscretions serve as the narrative's ignition, storytelling - its ethics, ownership, penmanship & production - is the fuel that keeps the engine going.

Storytelling, books, publishing, academia, marriage, dreams deferred, artistry, stamps of approval, staying relevant; there's a lot to like & ponder on here.