{"id":2380,"date":"2025-02-18T13:56:29","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T20:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2380"},"modified":"2025-02-18T13:56:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T20:56:30","slug":"the-most-jessica-anthony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2380","title":{"rendered":"Bookshelf \u2013 The Most, Jessica Anthony (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">John Cheever meets June Cleaver in this amuse bouche of a novel about a 1950s suburban housewife who one day awakens to the limitations of her life and finds herself enmeshed in a web of disenchantment and deception.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/TheMost-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2381\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/TheMost-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/TheMost-683x1024.jpg 683w, http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/TheMost-768x1152.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/TheMost.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Poor June, or in this case, Kathleen Beckett, finds herself so traumatized by the deceit of her husband, Virgil, a handsome, but unambitious insurance salesman, that on a sunny Sunday morning she retreats to the kidney-shaped swimming poor of her apartment complex. There, ignoring the stares of elderly neighbors and Virgil\u2019s entreaties, she spends the entire day, allowing the chlorinated water to bleach herself of delusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By nighttime, her skin slack and aqueous, but her heart anxious for truth-telling, Kathleen must choose: confront Virgil, extract a confession, and, in return, admit her own deception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Virgil, a type who never faced a difficult decision because things always \u201cjust sort of worked out,\u201d also must decide: continue on with Kathleen and find solace in \u201cthe small repetitions that made a life,\u201d or yield to his temptations and leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Among readers, \u201cThe Most\u201d seems pretty much a love-it-or-hate-it novel. I\u2019m one of the former because I like stories that embrace the complexity of simplicity, or perhaps better said (with another nod to Cheever), stories that peer through the fa\u00e7ade of familiarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Cheever meets June Cleaver in this amuse bouche of a novel about a 1950s suburban housewife who one day awakens to the limitations of her life and finds herself enmeshed in a web of disenchantment and deception. Poor June, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2380\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[937,770,935,837],"class_list":["post-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-1950s","tag-book-review","tag-jessica-anthony","tag-novel"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bookshelf \u2013 The Most, Jessica Anthony (2024) - Tim Porter&#039;s Second Draft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"John Cheever meets June Cleaver in this amuse bouche of a novel about a 1950s suburban housewife who one day awakens to the limitations of her life and finds herself enmeshed in a web of disenchantment and deception.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2380\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bookshelf \u2013 The Most, Jessica Anthony (2024) - 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