Famous Men

“Haunting and knife-bright, Famous Men renders womanhood with unsettling clarity and reckons with the absolute ache of becoming.”—Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age

“This audacious novel offers a fresh interrogation of a familiar scenario—a young woman in thrall to a powerful man. The true pleasure of Famous Men is that Buntin understands the complexity of morality, declining easy answers to difficult questions about art and ethics as well as sex and desire. I tore through it.”—Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Entitlement and Leave the World Behind

“Famous Men is a masterful portrayal—of a girl grasping for power and significance, of the slow creep of an older man testing boundaries, of a young woman realizing the scope of what’s been done. Yes, this is a story of complicity and harm, but it takes risks where other narratives would not dare. By aiming beyond buzzwords, Buntin delivers an immersive page-turner that has guts and heart and an honesty that is a privilege to read. This is a beautiful, generous, unsparing novel. Buntin is one of our best.”—Kate Elizabeth Russell, New York Times bestselling author of My Dark Vanessa

“Compassionate, bracing, and wise, this is an unforgettable portrait of one of those radiant chapters in a young person’s life that leave a mark forever.”—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

“Famous Men reveals the art monster in all of us and affirms Julie Buntin’s place among the essential writers of her generation.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“Famous Men is the story of a young woman who wants to remake herself in the mold of her idol—a story of sex, art, ambition, and compromise that is both deeply discomfiting and unbelievably compelling. Even as it holds a magnifying mirror up to our flaws, we cannot—we do not want to—look away.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth

“[Buntin’s] language is superb; for all Will’s self-assuredness, the precarity of her situation, tied so inextricably to Nathaniel, is rendered in such exacting and heartrending detail as to make the reader’s teeth ache. . . . A searing, brilliant novel about power, and stories, and who gets to tell them.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Buntin intimately captures a young woman’s leap into adulthood and its concurrent, commonplace cruelties. Her gutsy, nuanced, and bravura take on the #MeToo novel remarkably portrays the queasy churn of our modern reckonings within one woman and the world at large, online and in life. As Will harnesses her own narrative, readers grasp along with her the audacity inherent in every story women tell about women, beginning with the idea they’re worth telling at all. Hers is a thrill to read and think about.”—Booklist, starred review