★ 11/06/2023
Lefferts, a PW contributing editor, debuts with the ambitious and exciting story of a business student, the 30-something gay couple he’s been sleeping with, and the economic forces at work during the rise of Trump in 2016. Alistair, 22, is in his final semester at NYU when he learns that Herve, the billionaire he’s been working for, wants him dead. (The details of Herve’s shady dealings are gradually revealed—at the outset, readers only know the arrangement is earning Alistair $10,000 per month.) Mark and Elijah, the couple Alistair’s been seeing for the past year, are on the outs when he announces he’s skipping town. Mark, who has been supporting Elijah for several years on his dwindling trust fund, is heartbroken over Alistair’s departure. He moves home to New Jersey, where his father, the owner of a chain of trailer parks, plans to cash out to Wall Street. Meanwhile, Elijah, who can’t afford an apartment, crashes with his friend Jay, an edgelord artist whose videos of underwear and MAGA hat–clad gay models are funded by Herve’s brother. Alistair, a talented and humble striver who evokes John Grisham’s Mitch McDeere except for a self-sabotaging refusal to glad hand, hides out from Herve with his mother in Binghamton, N.Y. Lefferts’s nimble sense of scale enables him to convincingly depict the blue-chip firms who rejected Alistair and exploit the housing market, as well as to zoom in for poignant and subtle psychological realism. The results are electrifying. Agent: Chris Clemans, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.) This review has been updated for clarity.
Art, politics, late-stage capitalism, throuples: how is it possible for Ways and Means to cover so much ground, and so effortlessly? Lefferts writes with a satirist’s eye, but never loses his compassion for his characters, or the harrowing world in which they—and we—find ourselves. This is a remarkable debut by a major new talent.”
author of Let's Not Do That Again GRANT GINDER
Ways and Means exists somewhere between realism and wry parody of New York City as it was in the 2010s, with all its randy undergraduates, unhinged financiers, sex parties, and blissfully out-of-touch relatives in the tristate. Lefferts is excellent on real estate, resentment, and reactionary art, but his elegant, observant text is powered not by insider knowledge but by feeling, faith in the work a beautiful sentence can do on you, if you allow.
What happens when the American Dream fails you almost instantly? Lefferts explores a finance bro who wasn’t while he tackles ambition and drive in a biting expose.
Most Anticipated of 2024 DEBUTIFUL
An amazing debut novel from a prodigiously gifted young writer. . . . virtuosic storytelling. . . . [a] fascinating, complex, often funny saga of life in our troubled time.
NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
A work of enormous wit, humor, and passion that captures life in turbo capitalist America with compassion and grace.
New York Times bestselling author of Our Country F GARY SHTEYNGART
Captivating . . . fascinating . . . quietly witty, especially in the dialogue. With its cast of morally gray but profoundly likable characters, this book skewers the worlds of finance and high-profile contemporary art while addressing themes of generational trauma and redemption. . . . Both entertaining and thought-provoking, this book combines the high stakes of a thriller with the deep character studies and vivid descriptions of literary fiction.
[An] auspicious debut . . . Ways and Means grounds its characters in the unsexy practicalities of wealth and acquisition but spins from them a wildly entertaining drama of ambition and consequence . . . Greed, sex, provocation and revenge are all colorfully depicted in Ways and Means . . . [and] is unusual in that it’s a very gay novel that doesn’t make gayness its central identity. [John Lanchester] belongs to a short list of novelists—it includes Adam Haslett, Caleb Crain and Paul Murray, among others—who write convincingly about money. To that small circle we can now add Daniel Lefferts.
Wall Street Journal SAM SACKS
Funny and observant, Ways and Means is a depiction of workers on the brink that anyone can see themselves in.
Deadly serious in ambition, wildly entertaining in execution, Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut that charts the fault lines of class, politics, art, and desire during a period of American crisis. Every line of this gorgeous novel glows with Daniel Lefferts’ intelligence and compassion.
New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictu ANTHONY MARRA
Ways and Means is wise, funny, ribald, and suspenseful. Daniel Lefferts moves beautifully through narrative modes, including lavish, obscenely hilarious description, nuanced psychological portraiture, and, when the time is right, propulsive thrillerdom. A love story, a satire, a noir, and a cautionary tale, this novel is a terrific debut.
author of The Ask and No One Left to Come Looking SAM LIPSYTE
Taking place in the shadow of the 2016 political upheaval and the disillusionment that follows, Daniel Lefferts’ debut novel puts quintessential millennial striving under the microscope to glorious effect… Alistair McCabe, a gay Rust Belt transplant to NYC, is like so many of us: working for someone shady in order to get out of student debt. But the secrets his billionaire employer is hiding end up being dangerous enough that Alistair himself has to go on the run. His lovers, Mark and Elijah, are struggling with their own jobs and attendant moral compromises.
Most Anticipated of 2024 THEM
Totally absorbing, Ways and Means exhumes and lampoons the repressed erotics at the heart of American capitalism. Lefferts delivers The Great Gatsby for the 21st-century: irreverent, sexy, and sharp. A major event.
author of The Exhibition of Persephone Q and The V JESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS
[A]n astute examination of the complex intersection of money and intimacy...Alistair McCabe, a young gay college student from the Rust Belt, dreams of a career in high finance, a fantasy turned nightmare when he finds himself entangled with an enigmatic billionaire whose nefarious ambition puts Alistair’s life at risk. Lefferts’s debut...traces Alistair’s descent alongside the dissolution of the relationship between his paramours, an artistic couple with their own financial and existential woes.
Most Anticipated of 2024 LITERARY HUB
Ways and Means is a triumphant debut, a pulsating novel that dives into every crevice of our lives, from high art and higher finance, to the depths of student debt and MAGA politics. Readers will be propelled alongside the quixotic journey of young Alistair McCabe as he attempts to escape each newly unfolding nightmare before it swallows him alive. Captivating, fresh, witty and brilliant, Lefferts is a true, original American voice and this novel is not to be missed.
author of Why We Came to the City KRISTOPHER JANSMA
"Alistair McCabe, a young gay college student from the Rust Belt, dreams of a career in high finance, a fantasy turned nightmare when he finds himself entangled with an enigmatic billionaire whose nefarious ambition puts Alistair’s life at risk. Lefferts’s debut, an astute examination the complex intersection of money and intimacy, traces Alistair’s descent alongside the dissolution of the relationship between his paramours, an artistic couple with their own financial and existential woes."
42 Queer Books You Need to Read in 2024 ELECTRIC LITERATURE
Lefferts’s writing...carries all the confidence of a prose unruffled by the possibility that the experiences it recounts might prove controversial to the imagined reader.
[An] auspicious debut . . . Ways and Means grounds its characters in the unsexy practicalities of wealth and acquisition but spins from them a wildly entertaining drama of ambition and consequence . . . Greed, sex, provocation and revenge are all colorfully depicted in Ways and Means . . . [and] is unusual in that it’s a very gay novel that doesn’t make gayness its central identity. [John Lanchester] belongs to a short list of novelists—it includes Adam Haslett, Caleb Crain and Paul Murray, among others—who write convincingly about money. To that small circle we can now add Daniel Lefferts.”—SAM SACKS, Wall Street Journal PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS THEM, Most Anticipated of 2024 DEBUTIFUL, Most Anticipated of 2024 LITERARY HUB, Most Anticipated of 2024 Ways and Means ], the personal, often bodily drama of coming-of-age is inextricable from the inhuman forces of capital.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS Ways and Means exists somewhere between realism and wry parody of New York City as it was in the 2010s, with all its randy undergraduates, unhinged financiers, sex parties, and blissfully out-of-touch relatives in the tristate. Lefferts is excellent on real estate, resentment, and reactionary art, but his elegant, observant text is powered not by insider knowledge but by feeling, faith in the work a beautiful sentence can do on you, if you allow.”—BOMB MAGAZINE BOOKBROWSE RUMPUS ELECTRIC LITERATURE, 42 Queer Books You Need to Read in 2024 Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut that charts the fault lines of class, politics, art, and desire during a period of American crisis. Every line of this gorgeous novel glows with Daniel Lefferts’ intelligence and compassion.”—ANTHONY MARRA, New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictures Presents and A Constellation of Ways and Means is a depiction of workers on the brink that anyone can see themselves in.”—OUR CULTURE GARY SHTEYNGART, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends Ways and Means is wise, funny, ribald, and suspenseful. Daniel Lefferts moves beautifully through narrative modes, including lavish, obscenely hilarious description, nuanced psychological portraiture, and, when the time is right, propulsive thrillerdom. A love story, a satire, a noir, and a cautionary tale, this novel is a terrific debut.”—SAM LIPSYTE, author of The Ask and No One Left to Come Looking for You Ways and Means exhumes and lampoons the repressed erotics at the heart of American capitalism. Lefferts delivers The Great Gatsby for the 21st-century: irreverent, sexy, and sharp. A major event.”—JESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS, author of The Exhibition of Persephone Q and The Visitors Ways and Means to cover so much ground, and so effortlessly? Lefferts writes with a satirist’s eye, but never loses his compassion for his characters, or the harrowing world in which they—and we—find ourselves. This is a remarkable debut by a major new talent.”—GRANT GINDER, author of Let's Not Do That Again Ways and Means is a triumphant debut, a pulsating novel that dives into every crevice of our lives, from high art and higher finance, to the depths of student debt and MAGA politics. Readers will be propelled alongside the quixotic journey of young Alistair McCabe as he attempts to escape each newly unfolding nightmare before it swallows him alive. Captivating, fresh, witty and brilliant, Lefferts is a true, original American voice and this novel is not to be missed.”—KRISTOPHER JANSMA, author of Why We Came to the City
"What happens when the American Dream fails you almost instantly? Lefferts explores a finance bro who wasn’t while he tackles ambition and drive in a biting expose."
"Most Anticipated Books of 2024" DEBUTIFUL
A work of enormous wit, humor, and passion that captures life in turbo capitalist America with compassion and grace.
New York Times bestselling author of Our Country F Gary Shteyngart
Ways and Means is a triumphant debut, a pulsating novel that dives into every crevice of our lives, from high art and higher finance, to the depths of student debt and MAGA politics. Readers will be propelled alongside the quixotic journey of young Alistair McCabe as he attempts to escape each newly unfolding nightmare before it swallows him alive. Captivating, fresh, witty and brilliant, Lefferts is a true, original, American voice and this novel is not to be missed.
author of Why We Came to the City Kristopher Jansma
2023-10-21
Against the backdrop of the 2016 election, as Alistair McCabe prepares to flee mysterious and dire circumstances—along with his education at NYU, where he’s a senior, and a promising finance career—he fields a surprise call from his mother, Maura. Reluctant to tell her that he’s about to disappear, he lies and says he’s on his way to a class called “Futures and Options.” Readers might groan at the double entendre, but it makes a point: In this novel, the personal, often bodily drama of coming-of-age is inextricable from the inhuman forces of capital. We also follow Mark Landmesser and Elijah Pasternak, two unmotivated artists whose relationship sours as Mark’s trust fund dries up. A prolonged affair with the two of them catapults Alistair—whose successes at school and in sex have not yielded success in navigating the networking-fest of corporate finance—into a lucrative but clandestine arrangement with a disgraced financier and a reclusive billionaire. The story’s alternating timelines recount Alistair’s entanglement in and disentanglement from Mark and Elijah and this scheme—his arrival in New York and his escape. Lefferts also flashes back to Alistair’s childhood, when, despite his mother’s humanistic ideals, borderline poverty taught him to covet money, comfort, and the power to free her from debt. In college, Alistair’s ambition takes on a carnal quality. As he gropes toward upward mobility, he often recounts sexual exploits, spending sprees, and academic triumphs in a single breath. Luxury goods become “commercial iterations of the flesh,” money “almost sexual in the way it [lights] up his brain’s pleasure center.” As sex and political struggle swirl together, Alistair realizes that all “his chasing of money…amounted to one great thrusting out and forth.” Although Lefferts’ storytelling can land a bit on the nose, the underlying character drama is compelling.
A straightforward take on inherited privilege and hardship.
