WHAT YOU MAKE OF ME

In this provocative debut novel, a woman reflects on her relationship with her brother as he’s dying of brain cancer.

After their mother took her own life by walking into Long Island Sound and their father unravels from grief, Ava and Demetri, only a year apart in age, practically raise themselves. Demetri, a precocious kid, heads off to Harvard, and Ava, a talented painter, tags along, sleeping under his bed. Ava believes their identities are so entwined that she falls apart when Demetri starts dating: “It never occurred to me…that Demetri would be attracted to someone without me. Because different desires would make us what we were not—namely, two separate people.” Ava’s solution is to insert herself into all of Demetri’s relationships, convincing his love interests to slip out of their clothes and pose for nude portraits. Her greatest victory (and shame) is when she finds herself actually falling in love with one of these women. Desiring the same woman, it turns out, drives them apart. Ava is a thoroughly unsympathetic narrator, which is not itself a problem. Writers like Ottessa Moshfegh, Emma Cline, and Elizabeth Strout have created memorably difficult female protagonists. And yet, through absurdity and humor, the slow revelation of pathos, or searing social critique, their novels both wink at readers and nudge them to stop being so judgmental. It’s hard to know how we’re supposed to understand Dess’ novel, which satirizes the contemporary art world—Ava’s first major sale is a series of paintings literally produced as she’s having sex with men—and perhaps Ava, too, though her narcissism starts to feel thin and sad. Right before Demetri dies and he’s barely conscious, Ava shows him a portrait of their shared lover, seeking his approval one last time. It’s a painful scene to read.

A novel that can’t decide how seriously we should take its psychologically damaged characters.