Named a Summer Must Read by Wall Street Journal Elle Harper s Bazaar Entertainment Weekly
Glamour Esquire Bustle Town & Country Good Housekeeping Refinery29 and more [Hoby] might
have just written the defining New York City novel of our fraught socially anxious and
politically tumultuous times. Interview Intense and addictive. New York TimesA powerful novel
of youth desire and moral conflict in which a young man is seduced by the mirage of glamour
at terrible cost. Arriving in New York City for an internship at an elite but fading magazine
Luca feels invisible: smart but not worldly privileged but broke and uncertain how to
navigate a new era of social change. Among his peers is Zara a young Black woman whose sharp
wit and frank views on injustice create tension in the office especially in the wake of a
shock election that s irrevocably destabilized American life. In the months that follow as the
streets of New York fill with pink-hatted protesters and the magazine faces a changing of the
guard Luca is taken under the wing of an attractive and wealthy white couple Paula a
prominent artist and Jason her filmmaker husband whose lifestyle he finds both alien and
alluring. With the coming of summer Luca is swept up in the fever dream of their marriage
accepting an invitation to join the couple and their children at their beach house and
nurturing an infatuation both frustrating and dangerous. Only after he learns of a spectacular
tragedy in the city he has left behind does he begin to realize the moral consequences of his
allegiances. In language at once lyrical and incisive Virtue offers a clear-eyed unsettling
story of the allure of privilege and the costs of complacency from a writer of astonishing
acuity and vision.
