The Privileges »

Jonathan Dee is the author of four novels, most recently Palladio. He is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper's, and a former senior editor of The Paris Review. He teaches in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and the New School.

From the Hardcover edition.

Smart and socially gifted, Adam and Cynthia Morey are perfect for each other. With Adam’s rising career in the world of private equity, a beautiful home in Manhattan, gorgeous children, and plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful. But for the Moreys, their future of boundless privilege is not arriving fast enough. As Cynthia begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a choice that will test how much he is willing to risk to ensure his family’s happiness and to recapture the sense that the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility. The Privileges is an odyssey of a couple touched by fortune, changed by time, and guided above all else by their epic love for each other.

The New York Times Book Review - Roxana Robinson

Dee is at once funny, subversive and sympathetic. In fact, the strange harmonies of his authorial voice, which combines ravishing language, a bleak view of humanity and Dee's own innate good nature, provide much of the novel's interest…part of Dee's appeal is his sympathy for his characters, and his generous tendency to endow them, no matter how foolish or contemptible, with a certain nobility.