The Fortunate Ones by Ed Tarkington

"Charismatic Southern Republican Senator commits suicide." 

Charlie Boykin thought he had escaped the past when Arch Creigh was the center of his world, when he had carried a torch for Arch's girlfriend, the beautiful Vanessa.

The news of Arch's death sends Charlie reeling back in time to when he was the fortunate recipient of a scholarship to an elite private school where met Arch and was invited into the homes of the wealthy and privileged. It was a world built on tradition, the personal quashed for the sake of appearance, a world of secret pain and forbidden love.

Charlie had left to forge his own way as an artist. But when his mother was dying, he returned. It was time to forgive, to accept human vulnerability and frailty. It was time to face his past.

...I knew what was gripping me was just nostalgia, but I needed to feel it and see it through to the end so I could go back without regrets.~from The Fortunate Ones by Ed Tarkington

Arch was forging a political career. He embraced conservative values--but his private life would scandalize his supporters. 

Charlie wonders how the exceptional, wealthy, beautiful, Arch with his billionaire wife Vanessa became the champion of the 'people.' "There is nothing in this world to which people connect more willingly in uncertain times than the appearance of genuine certainty," and Arch projected that surety. People were clamoring to "get behind a charismatic businessman with a smart, beautiful wife and a fortune in the bank."

Vanessa accepts the life she is expected to have, sharing her secret guilt and doubts only with Charlie.

This is the story of a young man growing up, a nostalgic remembrance of lost innocence and the revelation that our heroes have feet of clay. It is about ambition and masks, how privilege corrupts, and choosing to turning away from corruption. It is about the fickleness of the public and misguided devotion.

Who are the 'fortunate ones'? The heirs of wealth? Or, those accepted into their charmed circle? Or, is it those who, drawn by the golden siren lure, glimpse behind the facade, and escape?

The novel reminded me of Brideshead Revisited and The Great Gatsby, while also reflecting today's political climate. 

I read this novel in two days, barely able to set it down.

I was given an ARC by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

Algonquin Books

Pub Date January 5, 2021   

ISBN: 9781616206802

hardcover $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when his mother arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world, he discovers, is an almost irresistible place where one can bend—and break—rules and still end up untarnished. As he gets drawn into a friendship with a charismatic upperclassman, Archer Creigh, and an affluent family that treats him like an adopted son, Charlie quickly adapts to life in the upper echelons of Nashville society. Under their charming and alcohol-soaked spell, how can he not relax and enjoy it all—the lack of anxiety over money, the easy summers spent poolside at perfectly appointed mansions, the lavish parties, the freedom to make mistakes knowing that everything can be glossed over or fixed?

 

But over time, Charlie is increasingly pulled into covering for Archer’s constant deceits and his casual bigotry. At what point will the attraction of wealth and prestige wear off enough for Charlie to take a stand—and will he?

 

The Fortunate Ones is an immersive, elegantly written story that conveys both the seductiveness of this world and the corruption of the people who see their ascent to the top as their birthright.