The Unwitting A Novel Author:Ellen Feldman In CIA parlance, those who knew were ?witting.? Everyone else was among the ?unwitting.? — — On a bright November day in 1963, President Kennedy is shot. That same day, Nell Benjamin receives a phone call with news about her husband, the influential young editor of a literary magazine. As the nation mourns its public loss, Nell has her private... more » grief to reckon with, as well as a revelation about Charlie that turns her understanding of her marriage on its head, along with the world she thought she knew.
With the Cold War looming ominously over the lives of American citizens in a battle of the Free World against the Communist powers, the blurry lines between what is true, what is good, and what is right tangle with issues of loyalty and love. As the truths Nell discovers about her beloved husband upend the narrative of her life, she must question her own allegiance: to her career as a journalist, to her country, but most of all to the people she loves.
Set in the literary Manhattan of the 1950s, at a journal much like the Paris Review, The Unwitting evokes a bygone era of burgeoning sexual awareness and intrigue and an exuberance of ideas that had the power to change the world. Resonant, illuminating, and utterly absorbing, The Unwitting is about the lies we tell, the secrets we keep, and the power of love in the face of both.
Praise for The Unwitting
?A story of love and intrigue during the Cold War, The Unwitting plumbs not only the secrets of spies, but those of the human heart. Moving, witty, and thoroughly intelligent, it is an absorbing and deeply satisfying read.??Kevin Baker, author of The Big Crowd
?Unforgettable . . . The Unwitting compelled me from the first page and through every unexpected twist and turn. This look into the dark places in human nature cries out to be read, re-ead, and discussed.??Lynn Cullen, author of the national bestseller Mrs. Poe
?Through the lens of a passionate, complex marriage, Ellen Feldman brings the Cold War back to life. The Unwitting is a wise and irresistible portrait of fascinating people in a tumultuous time.??Roger Straus III, former managing director, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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?Haunting and profoundly moving . . . Feldman?s characters live and love with breathtaking intensity, and her deft juggling of several zigzagging plots makes the pages flow past with the force of a slow but mighty river.??Booklist (starred review)
?A lustrous evocation of a stormy period in our past . . . Feldman?s scathing prose intensifies the daily routines of these families and makes readers fearful and worried along with them.??Library Journal (starred review)
?Disquieting originality . . . Feldman?s specialty is emotional ambivalence [and her]discernment of the shades of domestic gray . . . Breath-warm, intimate.??Times Literary Supplement
?A deftly revealing . . . portrait of the changing face of America.??Marie Claire
?A powerful, haunting deeply ambitious novel about love and war, impeccably executed, impossible to put down.??Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra: A Life« less