The Most - by Jessica Anthony (Paperback)

About the Book

"An expertly compressed, post-modern historical novella set over the course of a single, unseasonably warm day in November of 1957. Kathleen, a standout college tennis player, mother of two boys and wife to flagrantly handsome, aimless life insurance salesman, Virgil, decides to get into the pool in their Delaware apartment complex instead of going to church. And she won't come out. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth carrying that poor little doomed Soviet space dog, Kathleen and Virgil hurtle toward each other, and toward a reckoning that will either shatter the smooth edifice of their marriage or transform it, at last, into something real"--

Book Synopsis

Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction. One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. One of the Washington Post's Best Books of 2024​.

From "one of our most thrilling and singular innovators on the page" (Laura Van Den Berg), a tightly wound, consuming tale about a 1950s American housewife who goes for a swim in her apartment complex's swimming pool one morning...and won't come out.

It's November 3, 1957. As Sputnik 2 launches into space, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day. Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn't particularly happy in his job but he fulfills the role. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion with a key shot up her sleeve, is now a mother and homemaker. On this unseasonably warm Sunday, Kathleen decides not to join her family at church. Instead, she unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the deserted swimming pool of their apartment complex in Newark, Delaware. And then she won't come out.

A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most masterly breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.

Review Quotes

"Anthony's domestic drama closely examines the makings of a certain kind of mid-century American couple and what happens when one half of that pair decides that everything must change."--TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

"A perfect little novel that feels like a classic American piece of literature...it is tight and funny and interesting, it has great playfulness and I think anybody who wants to read something different - this is for you!"--SUZANNA HERMANS from Oblong Books, WAMC "The Roundtable"

"Jessica Anthony's spare, elegant novella... is darkly funny in its own way, and in the end is less a comedy than a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment."--THE WASHINGTON POST

"Distilling this novel down to just these elements misses its other dimensions, how it captures an anxiety both specific to its time and broadly relatable, how its narrator twists and diverts the story at will, and how in under 150 pages we are presented and taken through an incredibly nuanced conflict.... Jessica Anthony renders the pathos of older domestic dramas such as Revolutionary Road, but with an admirable economy of words and a creative omniscient narrator."--CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS

"The Most charges the air like a thunderclap when a married couple reckons with their past and the masks they hide behind. You will race to find out who they are and who they might become. Jessica Anthony's riveting novel is stellar. She has quickly become one of my favorite writers."--TOMAS Q. MORIN, author of MACHETE

"A vaguely disenchanted midcentury housewife enters her swimming pool on a warm November day -- and decides not to leave. A quick but psychologically acute read by the author of "Enter the Aardvark" with a vivid sense of time and place (not just the pool)."--BOSTON GLOBE

"Riveting"--PARADE

"An exquisite, taut literary mousetrap--this is a tale of sport in every sense of the word, of game and play, winning and losing, strategy and choice. If the secret of jazz, our male protagonist's hidden passion, is the notes they don't play, then the secret of this aching novella is the words the characters don't say to each other. Jessica Anthony's writing is a thunderous, polyphonic music all its own."--ALISSA NUTTING, author of MADE FOR LOVE and TAMPA

"The Most blindsided me with its power....This superb short novel, about a marriage at its breakpoint, deserves to become a classic....Anthony has served an ace."--HELLER MCALPIN, NPR.ORG

"With this seemingly small act of female rebellion, novelist Jessica Anthony leads us into the secret upheaval of marriage, good-girl American society, and a silenced female fury and ambition. Get ready, readers. The Most is exquisitely written, heady rush of story that you can--and probably will--finish in a few hours, before your sunscreen needs reapplying."--OPRAH DAILY

"Can the secrets and misdeeds of a marriage be survived?... Anthony's sharply focused portrait of seemingly average lives in midcentury America reveals the complexities of those lives in the course of one balmy day. A novella packing all the imagery and storytelling power of a novel."--KIRKUS, Starred Review

"Sensational...exceptional...Readers won't want to put this down."--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review

"The Most achieves the impossible: it says something new about marriage. In this thrilling novel, Anthony's genius for structural and chronological invention is grounded in sensory richness and the most vividly idiosyncratic characters I've encountered in a while. This is a 21st century literary classic waiting to happen."--KATE CHRISTENSEN, author of THE GREAT MAN

"With Enter the Aardvark Jessica Anthony proved herself to be one of the most inventive writers working today. That book should have prepared me for her ingenious new novella, The Most, but somehow it didn't. Trust me, though. The Most is a must."--RICHARD RUSSO, author of EMPIRE FALLS and the NORTH BATH Trilogy

"Jessica Anthony's The Most is a brilliant and startling domestic fable of longing. The novel captures a haunting unrest at the core of midcentury American life, treating its aimlessly striving characters with a stern caress of grace. The Most is a novel of ruthless beauty. I read it in one perfect sitting."--ISLE MCELROY, author of PEOPLE COLLIDE

About the Author

Jessica Anthony is the author of three books of fiction, most recently the novel Enter the Aardvark, a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. A recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature, Anthony wrote The Most while guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge in Stúrovo, Slovakia. She lives in Portland, Maine.