Starred review from October 1, 2022
Frumkin's (The Comedown) new novel proves that in America, anyone can become anything, including a corporate con man. Ezra Green doesn't have much going for him. He's small of stature, snaggle-toothed, and well on his way to being legally blind. When he's sent to Last Chance Camp, the last stop before juvie, he meets Orson Ortman--charming, handsome, naturally charismatic, everything Ezra isn't. The two become friends, eventual lovers, and partners in a series of larger and larger schemes that culminate in the creation of NuLife, a New Age company that promises consumers a lifetime of guaranteed bliss. Front man Orson and brains-of-the-operation Ezra are soon running a multimillion-dollar combination pyramid scheme and cult. Wanting to please Orson, the unrequited love of his life, Ezra takes bigger and bigger risks until everything goes completely off the rails. VERDICT A Gatsby for the 21st century, this book offers a satiric look at corporate-think, the desire for easy fixes, and the dissolution of the American Dream. Written with a dry, tongue-in-cheek wit, the novel also explores how the desire for love and connection can cause a kind of obliviousness. Perfect for fans of social satire and literary fiction.--Elisabeth Clark
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 10, 2022
Frumkin’s exuberant latest (after The Comedown) pulls off a queer take on the caper novel. Insecure, brainy Ezra Green and handsome, charismatic Orson Ortman meet as teenagers at the Last Chance Camp, a kind of pre-juvenile detention program. Both show a precocious knack for con artistry. After their release, they partner on a series of mini-cons, like hustling wealthy older women, that takes them into their 20s. Eventually, they embark on their greatest scam—founding a company called NuLife that sells happiness via wearable magnets. Ezra handles the business side and Orson takes care of all things spiritual. At the same time, they strike up a sexual relationship. Ezra is in love with Orson, but never says so for fear that Orson won’t reciprocate. The cultish NuLife grows into a huge success, making Ezra and Orson rich and famous. But then their empire comes under attack from a seemingly relentless financial investigator, a Stanford grad student who claims they stole his ideas, and a Hollywood starlet who comes between the two men. Frumkin’s sharp observations and clever plotting echo the Theranos scandal and the NXIVM cult, though some of the twists are a bit improbable. In the end, Frumkin advances the subversive notion that love might be the biggest con of all. For the reader, the deception is thoroughly enjoyable.
February 1, 2023
A pair of juvenile delinquents engineer a global wellness scam. None dare call it a Trump story, but Frumkin's second novel--following The Comedown (2018)--is plainly concerned with how a transparent grifter can siphon millions out of people with little more than empty promises and a modicum of charisma. As the story opens, the narrator, Ezra Green, is 17 and stuck at a reform camp for selling a blend of salt and Sudafed as a street drug. There, he meets Orson Ortman, a handsome huckster with bigger ambitions. Launching various grifts (fake high-fashion T-shirts, conning expensive recording gear out of a trust-fund brat), a romance soon blooms between them, culminating in a company called NuLife, which promises bliss through little more than some magnetized headgear and temple massaging. Remarkably quickly they launch a spendy retreat called the Farm and expand into a politically wobbly South American country. Orson's ego balloons as Hollywood celebrities and the Dalai Lama arrive at the Farm, and a jealous Ezra is determined to regain his affections; but when the only way you know to express your love is deceit, a stable relationship is hard to come by. Frumkin uses NuLife as an entertaining launchpad for a satire of Scientology-style cults, wellness bunkum, and cutthroat capitalism. (An Elon Musk-like billionaire tech mogul builds some dubious technology around NuLife.) Unlike The Comedown, an impressively rangy, big-picture novel, this one is narrower and more conventional. The simplicity exposes some hard-to-buy plot turns--Ezra becomes inexplicably reckless at times, and the business world is overly credulous of Orson. (Plus, Ezra's ever growing glaucoma is metaphorically on-the-nose.) The novel's greatest strength isn't its analysis of American-made frauds but as a love story, ending with a plot twist that's at once witty and wrenching. An earnest riff on evergreen themes of love, money, and betrayal.
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