It is hard to describe the wonderfully disorienting sensation of entering a Marcy Dermansky novel.
Having read all six of her novels, I’m well-positioned to try to illuminate the experience.
“Hot Air,” her latest offering, is an excellent example of the Dermansky method, where you start with an ordinary person in an ordinary situation before injecting some destabilizing element that is almost, but not quite, absurd. After which the character engages in a series of actions that are, objectively, a pretty bad idea, but in the context of the world Dermansky has conjured, both logical and surprising.
Yeah, I don’t know how someone pulls this off either, but if you’ve done it six times, clearly it isn’t a fluke. (I’ve previously written about her “Bad Marie,” “Very Nice” and “The Red Car.”)
“Hot Air” starts with Joannie, a divorced single mom living in a substandard but affordable apartment with her young daughter, Lucy, in the waning days of the most acute period of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is mostly fried. A writer who published a successful/award-winning book years earlier, she’s never managed to deliver a follow-up. She’s also given up on Lucy’s pandemic schooling and is wondering if her daughter will fail the third grade.
But Joannie has a date with Johnny, a fellow parent, her first date in seven years. Lucy and Johnny’s son, Tyson, are having a playdate in the basement while Johnny moves to kiss Joannie outside by his very nice pool. Just as Joannie is trying to extricate herself from a kiss she is not enjoying, a hot air balloon crashes into Johnny’s pool.
Acting on instinct and eager to disengage from the kiss, Joannie dives into the pool to rescue one of the two balloon passengers. On the surface, Joannie realizes she has rescued Jonathan Foster, her first kiss at camp when she was 14 years old, who has grown up to be a billionaire. He was trying to save a failing marriage to Julia via the gallant adventure of piloting a hot air balloon on their wedding anniversary.
Most of that background is revealed in the first chapter. What unfolds from there are the strange, but logical, and also surprising events of the rest of the novel.
To summarize too many of those events would be to infringe on one of the pleasures of a Marcy Dermansky novel, to see a character make a choice where you think, “Why would he/she do that? it’s so dumb,” and then being captivated by what results.
I can say that the couples decide to engage in a sleepover at Johnny’s house, which manages to entangle the foursome in ways that cannot be immediately unraveled. The entire action of the novel spans only a few days, and yet much of consequence happens.
Julia and Jonathan have been unmoored by failed attempts at having a child and the distortions of becoming obscenely wealthy. Joannie wonders if Lucy is the only thing that will give her meaning for the rest of her life.
As off-balance as Dermansky’s plots will keep you, what I find most compelling is the way she maps the small moments in which characters have close encounters with their deepest selves as they interrogate and then express (or fail to express) their desires. While Joannie is the center of the novel, chapters are also told from Johnny, Jonathan, Julia, and Lucy’s points of view, in addition to Vivian, Jonathan’s assistant.
The humor is dry as a bone to the point where if I summarized it out of context, you’d say it isn’t funny, but this is just part of the magic.
If you connect with one Marcy Dermansky novel, you’ve got more pleasurable reading in front of you.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Mark Twain” by Ron Chernow
2. “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann
3. “Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe
4. “Fever Beach” by Carl Hiaasen
5. “Led Zeppelin: The Biography” by Bob Spitz
— Michael P., Oak Park
I think Michael could enjoy the historical grounding and spicy storytelling of Jess Walter’s “The Cold Millions.”
1. “The Every” by Dave Eggers
2. “Empire of AI” by Karen Hao
3. “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want” by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna
4. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith
5. “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy
— Lance T., Naperville
This is a case where, rather than leaning into recent choices, I’m going to try to redirect onto a path Lance will hopefully enjoy as a change of pace, “The History of Sound” by Ben Shattuck.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
