What do you think?
Rate this book
A Hole in the Story
“A cunning writer with masterful timing and an outrageous sense of humor.”—Gary Shteyngart
An irreverent, darkly comic novel dissecting the misjudgments, hypocrisies, and occasional good motives that drive our politics and our journalism, as well as our most intimate personal relations.
At his desk one day, prominent Washington commentator Adam Zweig receives a text message. “Btw want to give you a heads-up abt some breaking news,” it reads. “Call soonest.” These are the early rumblings of an eventual media storm generated by small-town reporter Valerie Iovine, who has gone public with her account of sexual harassment at the hands of esteemed editor and liberal icon Max Lieberthol. Twenty years have passed since the incident, and though Adam wasn’t directly involved, he quickly finds himself implicated and entangled, his career under imminent threat.
Adam has never forgotten his history with as former colleagues, their workplace collaboration had gradually tipped into a mutual romantic attraction. Or so he believed. Confronted by the claims against his former boss and a growing awareness of rampant sexism in his industry, Adam, who had always thought of himself as progressive, is forced to challenge his own assumptions over the years. What once seemed incidental becomes sinister; what once seemed like a blundering encounter helped derail a young woman’s promising career.
Sly and ironic, A Hole in the Story explores one imperfect man’s dilemmas as he tries to keep his feet in a shifting moral landscape.
An irreverent, darkly comic novel dissecting the misjudgments, hypocrisies, and occasional good motives that drive our politics and our journalism, as well as our most intimate personal relations.
At his desk one day, prominent Washington commentator Adam Zweig receives a text message. “Btw want to give you a heads-up abt some breaking news,” it reads. “Call soonest.” These are the early rumblings of an eventual media storm generated by small-town reporter Valerie Iovine, who has gone public with her account of sexual harassment at the hands of esteemed editor and liberal icon Max Lieberthol. Twenty years have passed since the incident, and though Adam wasn’t directly involved, he quickly finds himself implicated and entangled, his career under imminent threat.
Adam has never forgotten his history with as former colleagues, their workplace collaboration had gradually tipped into a mutual romantic attraction. Or so he believed. Confronted by the claims against his former boss and a growing awareness of rampant sexism in his industry, Adam, who had always thought of himself as progressive, is forced to challenge his own assumptions over the years. What once seemed incidental becomes sinister; what once seemed like a blundering encounter helped derail a young woman’s promising career.
Sly and ironic, A Hole in the Story explores one imperfect man’s dilemmas as he tries to keep his feet in a shifting moral landscape.
- GenresFictionContemporary
208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2025
About the author
Ken Kalfus
31 books76 followersHe was born in the Bronx, NY and grew up in Plainview, Long Island.
Kalfus started college at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, but dropped out after the first year. He attended various other universities including the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Kalfus started writing at an early age.
Kalfus started college at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, but dropped out after the first year. He attended various other universities including the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Kalfus started writing at an early age.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 14, 2025
Dynamic, thought-provoking, and a difficult and somewhat haunting read; this one is going to sit with me for a while. There’s a lot to unpack in the narrative and Kalfus does an excellent job with the character‘s progression all the way until the end. Would be a good book club pick so long as folks are willing to keep an open mind and not take offense to where the story goes.
February 23, 2025
Interesting, timely and thought provoking
May 22, 2025
I don't know I feel about this book. It was one of the more thought provoking books I've read in a long time. I didn't really see the humor that other reviews touted, but it is well written, relevant, and I've been thinking about it since I finished it this afternoon.
May 10, 2026
A predictable page turner that is maybe 10 years too late to feel particularly relevant. I mostly read it for the B plot story line about the capital habeas attorney. That part was excellent, although I felt Kalfus was a bit sadistic to the character.
July 29, 2026
Adam Zweig, political commentator on all things Washington, receives a text message from a journalist, giving him a heads-up on a breaking story. It’s the early Trump years, with the #MeToo storm just beginning to gather. The story is that Valerie Iovine, one-time junior reporter on the magazine she and Adam worked for twenty years earlier, is alleging that their boss, Max Lieberthol, sexually harassed her. Lieberthol is an icon in the industry, untouchable, it would have seemed, but times have changed and icons all over the political and media world are being toppled. They’re not going down without a fight, though, and Valerie is being subjected to the usual online abuse – called liar, opportunist, and worse. Adam knows her story is true. He was there the day it happened, and supported her through her emotional reaction, in the process deepening their tentative friendship.
At least, that’s how he remembers it. As the story continues to create headlines, Adam finds himself reassessing his own behaviour with eyes that have been opened in the last couple of years by the many stories that have come to light of women being harassed and abused in the workplace. And the more he remembers, the more he begins to cringe at his own actions. For he had been very attracted to Valerie, and hadn’t he – perhaps – taken advantage of her vulnerability to weasel his own way into her affections? Nothing that would count as harassment, of course – Adam is a good man, a liberal man, an ally, for goodness sake! But in these days of guilt by association, will the world judge him guilty? After all, he didn’t confront Max, didn’t stop working for him, didn’t try to protect other young women from the same treatment. So belatedly he decides it’s time to stand up – he publicly confirms Valerie’s story as true, thrusting himself into the maelstrom. What a hero!
Kalfus’ look at the early days of the #MeToo movement is full of his rather sly humour, though it is making some serious points about how that period impacted workplace politics. He intentionally takes us into the male perspective, and shows how easily men went along with the prevailing testosterone-fuelled environment that working women had to face. I feared at first that he was going to give us a poor-me story of a man destroyed over trivia, but he’s way too foxy to fall into that trap. As Adam’s memories unfold and as, crucially, we eventually learn how Valerie viewed the same events, the whole moral landscape becomes so murky it’s hard to see clearly just who is guilty and who is innocent. Young Valerie’s victimhood is clear, but is Adam a bystander-victim, guilty only by virtue of having been there? Or is he as guilty as Max, or even more so? And is Valerie still as innocent now as she was then? What are her motives for going public now, so many years later?
The odd thing about the book is that it feels somewhat out of time. The #MeToo movement is rather in the rear-view mirror now, so the book doesn’t quite feel topical. However, it also doesn’t have quite the perspective of a novel looking back and assessing a social pivot point with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of how it played out in the future. Had it been published nearer the time, it would have felt sharp and insightful, and to a degree it still does. But the immediacy of the movement has passed, and there’s little here examining what it has left in its wake – did it fundamentally change things for women or have things simply reverted to the status quo ante? I was hoping for more of that.
As always with Kalfus, I found it highly readable and entertaining, and a great study of the rather self-absorbed milieu of the political media. The book’s ending is incredibly ambiguous and certainly left me pondering, and rather unsure of what point Kalfus was making. Though perhaps that ambiguity is itself the point – that the movement has left the whole question of sexual politics and power-play unresolved, quite likely to slip back to the same-old, same-old, simply with a different cast of characters and a new vocabulary. Thought-provoking stuff!
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
At least, that’s how he remembers it. As the story continues to create headlines, Adam finds himself reassessing his own behaviour with eyes that have been opened in the last couple of years by the many stories that have come to light of women being harassed and abused in the workplace. And the more he remembers, the more he begins to cringe at his own actions. For he had been very attracted to Valerie, and hadn’t he – perhaps – taken advantage of her vulnerability to weasel his own way into her affections? Nothing that would count as harassment, of course – Adam is a good man, a liberal man, an ally, for goodness sake! But in these days of guilt by association, will the world judge him guilty? After all, he didn’t confront Max, didn’t stop working for him, didn’t try to protect other young women from the same treatment. So belatedly he decides it’s time to stand up – he publicly confirms Valerie’s story as true, thrusting himself into the maelstrom. What a hero!
Kalfus’ look at the early days of the #MeToo movement is full of his rather sly humour, though it is making some serious points about how that period impacted workplace politics. He intentionally takes us into the male perspective, and shows how easily men went along with the prevailing testosterone-fuelled environment that working women had to face. I feared at first that he was going to give us a poor-me story of a man destroyed over trivia, but he’s way too foxy to fall into that trap. As Adam’s memories unfold and as, crucially, we eventually learn how Valerie viewed the same events, the whole moral landscape becomes so murky it’s hard to see clearly just who is guilty and who is innocent. Young Valerie’s victimhood is clear, but is Adam a bystander-victim, guilty only by virtue of having been there? Or is he as guilty as Max, or even more so? And is Valerie still as innocent now as she was then? What are her motives for going public now, so many years later?
The odd thing about the book is that it feels somewhat out of time. The #MeToo movement is rather in the rear-view mirror now, so the book doesn’t quite feel topical. However, it also doesn’t have quite the perspective of a novel looking back and assessing a social pivot point with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of how it played out in the future. Had it been published nearer the time, it would have felt sharp and insightful, and to a degree it still does. But the immediacy of the movement has passed, and there’s little here examining what it has left in its wake – did it fundamentally change things for women or have things simply reverted to the status quo ante? I was hoping for more of that.
As always with Kalfus, I found it highly readable and entertaining, and a great study of the rather self-absorbed milieu of the political media. The book’s ending is incredibly ambiguous and certainly left me pondering, and rather unsure of what point Kalfus was making. Though perhaps that ambiguity is itself the point – that the movement has left the whole question of sexual politics and power-play unresolved, quite likely to slip back to the same-old, same-old, simply with a different cast of characters and a new vocabulary. Thought-provoking stuff!
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
August 8, 2025
Damn, I don't even know what to say about this book. I hope the author is using a play on words with the title, because that would deliver some (needed) justice. If he intends for the title to mean "A-hole" in the story, as in "Asshole in the Story," then I like the book a lot more. The ending really got to me. SPOILERS AHEAD.
First you like Adam, then you find out Adam is actually a skeeze, and then Adam gets a big promotion. His #MeToo outing is nothing but a blip for him, and he faces no serious lasting consequences (he does lose a gig on MSNBC, but then becomes editor of a magazine with a fat paycheck, so it's a net positive for him). Does the author side with Adam or not? I couldn't really tell, which made for a morally ambiguous reading experience. Maybe that's what the author intended.
I finished this book feeling disappointed that Adam never got his comeuppance, but maybe that's the point of the book - that most men still get away with it. Which is *dark*. OR, maybe the point of the book is that attraction and sex can be complicated, and people (men) can mess up (badly) even when they have the best of intentions, and that's just part of life. Maybe the point of the book is BOTH of these points. I AM NOT SURE. I would love to hear thoughts from others who have finished it!
First you like Adam, then you find out Adam is actually a skeeze, and then Adam gets a big promotion. His #MeToo outing is nothing but a blip for him, and he faces no serious lasting consequences (he does lose a gig on MSNBC, but then becomes editor of a magazine with a fat paycheck, so it's a net positive for him). Does the author side with Adam or not? I couldn't really tell, which made for a morally ambiguous reading experience. Maybe that's what the author intended.
I finished this book feeling disappointed that Adam never got his comeuppance, but maybe that's the point of the book - that most men still get away with it. Which is *dark*. OR, maybe the point of the book is that attraction and sex can be complicated, and people (men) can mess up (badly) even when they have the best of intentions, and that's just part of life. Maybe the point of the book is BOTH of these points. I AM NOT SURE. I would love to hear thoughts from others who have finished it!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 7, 2025
Just read my first Kalfus, A Hole in the Story, (an FB connection linked to it and piqued my curiosity). I’m processing my thoughts, but it's very compelling and a quick read. The #MeToo politics resonate.
My wife, who works in the corporate environment, has told me of multiple times of peers, whether slightly or quite a bit higher in the corporate chain, who made explicit passes. Especially in her early days. She despises the dynamic of men in power taking advantage of such. I'm on her side. It’s a worthy element of the culture to be aware of and take a stand against.
Back to A Hole, not sure if I’m completely satisfied with the ending, as I wanted different twists, or a less ambiguous resolution, but such is art and life; the book earns 5 stars. The newsroom culture really drew me in, the prose flies by in its concise and erudite knowledge of the terrain and fascinating snapshots of our culture. I’ve already queued up A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.
My wife, who works in the corporate environment, has told me of multiple times of peers, whether slightly or quite a bit higher in the corporate chain, who made explicit passes. Especially in her early days. She despises the dynamic of men in power taking advantage of such. I'm on her side. It’s a worthy element of the culture to be aware of and take a stand against.
Back to A Hole, not sure if I’m completely satisfied with the ending, as I wanted different twists, or a less ambiguous resolution, but such is art and life; the book earns 5 stars. The newsroom culture really drew me in, the prose flies by in its concise and erudite knowledge of the terrain and fascinating snapshots of our culture. I’ve already queued up A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.
March 17, 2026
This novel addresses issues surrounding sexual harassment and primarily takes place in Washington DC during the first Trump administration, though it could be right now, so it is very pertinent. On top of that, it focuses on reporters at a political magazine that is struggling as a part of the changing world of media.
The characters felt very real and understandable in their confusion and ambivalence about the sexual politics of the workplace – something that always feels like a moving target.
My only issue with this book was its lack of chapters, which kept me from giving it five stars here. The text just continues with occasional extra spacing to signal the end of a section. I prefer a more definite structure but this format was obviously a deliberate decision by the author. I would love to know why...
This book is one of my selections as a volunteer reader and rater for the Mark Twain American Voice Award.
The characters felt very real and understandable in their confusion and ambivalence about the sexual politics of the workplace – something that always feels like a moving target.
My only issue with this book was its lack of chapters, which kept me from giving it five stars here. The text just continues with occasional extra spacing to signal the end of a section. I prefer a more definite structure but this format was obviously a deliberate decision by the author. I would love to know why...
This book is one of my selections as a volunteer reader and rater for the Mark Twain American Voice Award.
April 25, 2025
#metoo at its finest. Twenty years earlier a pillar of publishing industry makes a pass at a twenty something, female very attractive freelance writer while reviewing her draft of a story for the weekly magazine. Distraught, she storms out of the office but is intercepted by one of the seasoned writers who tries to console her. Fast forward to the height of the #metoo era and the young writer posts her accusation. Social Media hijinks ensue. Well done.
May 19, 2025
A quick and important read.
Most readers, living in the 2020s, will see the reveal coming long before the narrator, a writer who has considered himself an ethical, good guy.
Folks will want to remember that sexual harassment was not really considered a crime in this country until the 1980s. A lot went unreported, and the dominant culture socialized men to think their behavior was ok and to ignore the resistance of the people they assaulted and harassed.
Most readers, living in the 2020s, will see the reveal coming long before the narrator, a writer who has considered himself an ethical, good guy.
Folks will want to remember that sexual harassment was not really considered a crime in this country until the 1980s. A lot went unreported, and the dominant culture socialized men to think their behavior was ok and to ignore the resistance of the people they assaulted and harassed.
July 3, 2025
(3.5 stars) A riveting and sadly no longer topical examination of the #metoo movement told from the perspective of a white male journalist who learns that he can simultaneously (or at least in quick succession) be an ally to a wronged female colleague, then complicit in her suffering, and then the cause of it. A richly told, really uncomfortable tale.
July 2, 2026
This book calls itself “An irreverant, darkly comic novel”, centered on the #MeToo movement. However, the point the story is trying to make here is only funny if you think the #MeToo movement was funny. This might be a better read for men, as a woman, I didn’t find the revelation that the main character was just as much of a creep as the other men to be at all surprising.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 26, 2025
All three men, though, were bundled together in her experience of her twenty-sixth year. Try to pull one out and the other two came with him, grabbing hold of an arm or leg, followed by other men or fragments of men or thoughts of men or desires of men, past and future.
May 23, 2025
Pretty fun read. I liked the writing style and the storyline was interesting, with flawed characters that made for good storytelling.
Read
June 1, 2025didnt like it after 20 pages so i didnt read the rest
June 16, 2025
maybe i should have expected the turn this took. maybe we should all know better. this really worked for me
June 16, 2025
ken has never missed
August 9, 2025
typical. man rewarded for rape-like behavior.
August 21, 2025
A quick read, engrossing and entertaining yet quite serious in its dissection of many current issues. Satirical and thought provoking.
July 3, 2025
I couldn't put it down and have many compliments about it. The characters are incredibly well written, the dialogue is believable and the topic still resonates.
However, there's no (&^$#& way that I'm buying that Valerie went braless to work frequently, ESPECIALLY when she was wearing a white shirt. Mr. Kalfus, please give women more credit than that. You should've run that detail by a female editor.
However, there's no (&^$#& way that I'm buying that Valerie went braless to work frequently, ESPECIALLY when she was wearing a white shirt. Mr. Kalfus, please give women more credit than that. You should've run that detail by a female editor.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews