Private Means

by Cree LeFavour

"This feels like an Ian McEwan novel. Served on a bed of Cheever. I can't offer higher praise than that. But written by a woman. Which is even better."-- Elizabeth Gilbert

Spanning the course of a single summer, Private Means is acclaimed memoirist Cree LeFavour's sumptuous fiction debut--a sharply observed comedy of manners and a moving meditation on marriage, money, and loss.

A deliciously compulsive first novel from New York Times Editor's Choice author of Lights On, Rats Out, Cree LeFavour's Private Means captures the very essence of summer in a sharply observed, moving meditation on marriage, money, and loss.

It's Memorial Day weekend and Alice's beloved dog Maebelle has been lost. Alice stays in New York, desperate to find her dog, while her husband Peter drives north to stay with friends in the Berkshires. Relieved to be alone, Alice isn&apost sure if she should remain married to Peter but she's built a life with him. For his part, Peter is pleased to have time alone--he's tired of the lost dog drama, of Alice's coolness, of New York. A psychiatrist, he ponders his patients and one, particularly attractive, woman in particular. As the summer unfolds, tensions rise as Alice and Peter struggle with infidelity, loneliness, and loss. Escaping the heat of New York City to visit wealthy friends in the Hamptons, on Cape Cod, and in the Berkshires, each continues to play his or her part in the life they've chosen together. By the time Labor Day rolls around, a summer that began with isolation has transformed into something else entirely.

Matching keen observations on human behavior with wry prose, Private Means, with its sexy, page-turning plot, will draw fans of Nora Ephron and Meg Wolitzer. At once dark, funny, sad, and suspenseful, LeFavour's debut is a rare a tart literary indulgence with depth and intelligence.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 11, 2020

Reviews

[Theresa Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not that long but really a slog to get through because nothing happens. It’s about a married academic couple who have been together for twenty-something years and are bored out of their minds with each other. It’s just hard to drum up sympathy for a couple that isn’t disgustingly well off but is definitely doing just fine financially and health-wise. Are their careers not always as scintillating as they may hope—oh boo hoo, join the club.

They have twin girls going to college in California and Alice had them shortly after they got married, so she really didn’t do much with her Ph.D. and focused on raising them. That’s it. That’s all that happens. They drink a lot and whine a lot. I just saved you the trouble of reading this book. Also, the author chose not to use quotation marks around what people say, so you have to figure out for yourself if someone is speaking or if you’re reading exposition. Usually it’s not that hard, but there are times you have to go back and figure out what you just read—the reason we as a people have agreed to punctuation is to make things easier for readers. In a world where people are attached to the internet and not books, I really don’t think we should make things even less pleasant for the people who can be bothered to read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, which RELEASES AUGUST 11, 2020.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing story line of a well-worn marriage where both parties seek their own method of self-help as intimacy between Peter and Alice becomes nothing more than wishful thinking. The prose was intelligent and insightful—perhaps detrimental? At times the narrative read like a dissertation. Both Alice and Peter analysed and dissected their personal issues with a clinical detachment that was analogous of their chosen professions. There didn't seem to be much of a connection, not only between the couple but also within themselves and their emotions.

Again, I liked the story idea, but would have preferred a more emotive presentation.

Thank you to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic, and Cree LeFavour for an ARC of 'Private Means' in exchange for an honest and voluntary review.

[Mairy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of Peter, a psychotherapist, and his spouse Alice, a scientist, parents of twin daughters who left NY for CA to continue their studies. The story evolves over a full summer: are they experiencing empty-nest syndrome? Have they grown out of love with each other? Is there just something missing in their couple and will they be able to reconnect?

What I enjoyed most about this book is the extensive psychoanalysis of both characters, due to Peter's profession. It is also interesting to see the dynamics and the contradictory feelings. Why a partner is acting a certain way, how it is perceived by the other, and yet the partner is feeling the exact opposite of the perception given.

If you enjoy marital stories, psychology, cheating, wealthy lifestyles, you will enjoy this one.

My only objection: the lack of the quotation marks in dialogues. It was not always clear whether the writing was an oral statement or a thought.

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate books that just fucking end like the author kicked the electrical cord out of the wall.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lefavour is a beautiful writer that's able to make the experiences of this incredibly spoiled and unsympathetic couple into a moving analysis of a couple's path back to each other (or not) after their singular purpose of child rearing is complete. I do wonder if this would have had a more positive reception if it hadn't been released at the height of the pandemic, when there were more obvious troubles to attend to. Private Means reminds me of a more concise Wellness (by Nathan Hill).

[Beth Mowbray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the past year or so I have really enjoyed stories that examine women and/or relationships mid-life, and this one is no exception. Alice and Peter live a “good” life in New York City. They have been married for 20-some-odd years. Their daughters have successfully gone off to college. Peter continues to work as a psychiatrist and Alice finally has the time to return her focus to the work she gave up for her family so many years ago. Yet, like so many couples, they find their relationship coming apart at the seams.

Grieving the loss of her dog Maebelle, who ran away, Alice is unexpectedly unfaithful to Peter one night when he is out of town. Peter has his own struggles, however, as he finds himself inappropriately attracted to a young patient. Told over the course of a summer — from Memorial Day to Labor Day — Private Means follows the lives of this couple, peeling away the pleasant facade they show the world and revealing what the inside of a long-standing marriage (sometimes) really looks like. With simple, crisp writing, LeFavour builds characters that are both familiar, even stereotypical, yet unique enough to keep the pages turning.

Many thanks to Grove Press for gifting me an advance copy of this book. Private Means is now available wherever you buy books.

[Kristi Lamont · Rating 3 out of 5]

BOOK REPORT
Not Only But Especially For Rebecca R

Let me begin by putting my reaction to this book into context: I read very fast.

No, I didn't take a speed-reading course. And I actually don't do it on purpose. It's just one of the superpowers with which the universe chose to gift me, and for that I am very, very thankful.

But what can happen is that I can spoil a story for myself. Example: When my husband calls up the full episode list for a series on Netflix, I have to cover or avert my eyes while he scrolls because if I am looking at the TV I will inadvertantly take in everything on the screen and thus wind up knowing about a major plot twist before it happens.

While my overall reaction to this book is really 3 stars trending downward, there were times the tension level was so high that I quite literally put my arm across the right page and my arm across what I hadn't read of the left page so I would not know what happened until it happened. That is how good a job, in my opinion, Cree LeFavour did of making the anxiety of the characters almost palpable, to the point where This Particular Reader wanted to pick at her cuticles out of near-fear about what might happen next.

So, 5 stars for that. Also, 5 stars for the level of detail about a certain subset of New Yorkers and their lifestyles, especially their jobs. But 2 stars for the unlikeability of the characters, who felt like paper cutouts a lot of the time because we didn't get enough/the right kind of backstory on them. And 1.5 stars for that ending. Really?

I do plan to read Ms Le Favour's memoir, though; mainly for the very silly reason that I am somewhat enamored with her name.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to #NetGalley.

Rounding down to 2 and 1/2 stars. I'm just glad it was a fast read.

What a confusing book this was as was the cover which allured me to try it in in the first place I think.

This book was all over the place and sometimes there were two stories going on at once in the same paragraph. Not sure if it was because it was an ebook or what.

A lot of the psychiatric talk with the husband Peter and the bird talk (Alice was doing research on some type of bird species) was over my head and other verbiage was too.

I thought this book was mostly about a missing dog but turned into so much more. Their marriage wasn't the best that's for sure.

[Celia Buell (semi hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry to say, this book turned out exactly how I expected it to be. It was a contemporary empty nest novel and absolutely nothing else.

I've only read a few strictly contemporary novels that are not YA and not cozy mysteries. The first one I read was The Study of Animal Languages and I have to admit, this one had a very similar premise, right down to the occupations of the couple involved.

This novel features way too much infidelity and two insecure characters who don't grow much over the course of the story. Yes, I understand that it's their midlife crisis or whatever, but aren't people supposed to come out stronger from those? Or at least changed? The two main characters were almost no different from the first sentence to the last.

The end of this novel didn't help with that either. Everything was wrapped up in a very whirlwind kind of way, and there was a very unclear ending.

One other thing that bothered me about this novel was the massive paragraphs and complete lack of punctuation signifying dialogue. This is not the kind of novel that really works without quotation marks, because everything sort of blends into each other. I know this is an ARC and I hope Cree LeFavour and her team will consider this before the book hits shelves in August.

This is the fastest I've ever read a book I won through Goodreads Giveaways, and I think now I know why I often wait on reading them. This is the kind of novel that might be good to read at some point in time, but today was not that time. I will not be rereading this, but I wish Cree LeFavour the best of luck with the right audience when this book hits shelves.

Disclaimer: Free in exchange for an honest review, via Goodreads Giveaways. Thank you to Grove Atlantic for listing.

[alailiander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what it says when you don't feel like you particularly like or care about a story, but you've highlighted a good third of it... This is a story of a longstanding and not particularly happy marriage and the events unfolding within and around it one summer. It is ugly and messy, but it felt honest and interrogated a lot of things that I could recognize, if not relate to. Neither of the main characters are particularly likable, but I still mostly rooted for them, for some reason? I'm honestly not sure. Also, wow, boy howdy did they know how to fight!

I think what was the most compelling of this whole piece for me was the everydayness of it... the mundane... the not-specialness. So many stories require something exceptional to happen or one of the characters to be exceptional and it was as disheartening as it was refreshing to watch these everyday characters go about their everyday marriage. And it is certainly the mark of a good writer to make the ordinary as readable as this is. The prose in this book is insightful and engaging, if a bit chilly; albeit LeFavour lost me every time Alice started thinking about starling mumurations. Perhaps understanding that would have added depth to the book, but it was definitely over my head (bird pun totally intended).

The characters in this are very definitively of a different socioeconomic bracket than myself and I had to look up a lot of the referenced goods. I find that task somewhat exhausting, but I suppose it does in a way flush out the character... when Alice daydreams about a Christopher Wool piece, you do learn a bit about her, so more power to you if you're the classy reader who gets the references without google.

On a completely unrelated note - I absolutely love any non-obvious Austen reference and this book has one and it made me so very happy.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the arc to review.

[Anne Wolfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a hot mess of a book! I couldn't decide whether it was for foodies, fans of porno, students of quantum physics and bird murmurations, wine lovers, fashionistas, dog lovers, therapists, patients, or a combination of these and more. Strangely, I did like this book and kept reading till the end despite feeling a desperate need for an editor. There are no punctuation marks when a character is speaking. There's talk of a lesbian couple living together for twenty five years but doing that for a third of a decade. (Isn't a decade ten years?)

Warning: if language or sex scenes bother you, DON'T PICK IT UP. That said, Private Means kept me interested. Are we becoming a nation of asexual couples? Is the birth rate dropping because people find masturbation less work? Hmmm. A number of questions to consider.

Alice, a non-employed scientist and Peter, a Freudian psychiatrist, live in Manhattan. They are not wealthy, but visit friends who are. They travel to second homes, drink wine, talk. Yet they are not happy together despite having no reason to be miserable. A physical altercation occurs, yet they do not split up. The ending is inconclusive. Oh yes, the lost dog turns up.

Thank you top NetGalley and the author and publisher for an early copy.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alice and Peter are alone for the first time in 18 years. Their girls have gone to college, their dog is lost, and they are faced with the reality that their relationship is no longer working. Their friends are more successful financially and in their relationships. His parents are in steep cognitive decline. He is no longer inspired by his work and she is struggling to get a foothold back in the career she left to raise a family. Over the course of one summer they are both forced to examine their inner selves more closely. They turn to infidelity, alcohol, pornography, and violence, but seem incapable of finding ways to cope with their smoldering rage and emptiness.

I feel like the author did an excellent job of getting in to the minds and lives of this couple. They felt very real, very fallible, very human. Neither Alice nor Peter was very sympathetic; it was hard to like either of them. At the same time their struggles felt very honest though I found Alice the more relatable character.

The book takes place over a three month period and realistically speaking it is very hard to make substantive changes in a troubled relationship in that period of time when neither party wants to make an effort, and neither Alice nor Peter seem invested in making that effort. Perhaps that's meant to be the message of the book. However, at times that does make the pace of the book slower and the action rather repetitive. There was a lot of angst interspersed with graphic sexual scenes and relatively little personal growth.

I received this book free from goodreads giveaways which does not impact my review in any way.

@@@Dog related Spoiler Below@@@






The dog is fine. It didn't happen until the end of the story and I felt like too little was made of her return. But she is fine. As a dog lover, that was very important to me, but I wonder if not having the dog return might have been more consistent with the book as the ambiguity of her fate would have relected the ambiguity of the future of Alice and Peter's relationship.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be trapped in a marriage that's 50% seething resentment, 30% unchecked narcissism, and 20% humid Upper West Side misery, then Private Means is the novel for you. On the surface, not much actually happens—Alice loses her dog, mourns it like a dead child, and makes some questionable decisions.
Peter, a psychiatrist with the self-awareness of a brick, falls into an ethical death spiral as he also makes questionable decisions.

Alice and Peter hate each other with the kind of quiet, simmering disdain that takes decades to perfect, and honestly, it's kind of mesmerizing?? There's something impressively authentic about the way their conversations are 90% subtext, passive-aggression, and unspoken rage. Those texts about takeout? Something so mundane and real and so full of rage....lol

And yet, despite the fact that reading about two self-absorbed people slowly suffocating each other isn't exactly thrilling, but not horrible. If you enjoy watching highly educated, emotionally stunted people self-destruct in slow motion, this one's for you.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sigh. Peter and Alice met and married young. He's a psychoanalyst who is fantasizing about one of his patients, she's a biophysicist who is rather languid to say the least about her studies. Their twin girls are in college and they don't have a lot to say to each other. Then Maebelle, Alice's dog, goes missing on Memorial Day weekend and all sorts of things sort of happen as the couple navigates the summer. They stay at other people's homes, Alice joins a support group for owners of missing animals, Alice has a brief affair, and Peter feels guilty about his obsession. They almost read as caricatures of residents of the Upper West side where they live. This was saved for me by the writing and periodic incisive observations but much of the time I wanted to just tell them both to grow up. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Private Means by Cree LeFavour is essentially a stream-of-consciousness whining session by two people in a marriage who maybe need a change or maybe need to talk to one another. This kind of book is really difficult to read as it is sometimes hard to know when the conversations are real and when it's not; when it is real, with whom it is taking place. I don't want to be in someone else's head. I have enough going on in my own and I would certainly never make a novel of it. I enjoy a little more actions; when people take hold and solve their problems whomever that may be. I felt like the time-spent reading this book is time I will never get back. I recommend it only if the potential reader things this kind of book is art.

I was invited to read a free ARC of Private Means by Netgalley. All opinions and interpretations contained herein are solely my own. #netgalley #privatemeans

[Louise Foerster · Rating 2 out of 5]

In PRIVATE MEANS, Cree LaFavour delves deep into a longstanding, difficult marriage between partners bound by their children and long time together even as they are repelled by one another and attracted to others. I am deeply familiar with the world that the highflying academic and psychiatrist inhabit as well as the terrible bonds that keep them enmeshed in a marriage long past its genuinely respectful, if not loving time. At times, I was utterly transported by the author's deft touch with description, with evoking a time and place, and feeling while other times was astounded that I had kept on reading all the way to the end. I was desperately disappointed in the ending of the story, resolving nothing and not even making it clear what actually happened. I believe in this writer and only hope she tells a more straightforward, less ethereal and ungrounded story the next time.

[David Balzarini · Rating 3 out of 5]

The use of language, while at times pretty and engaging, it lacks any emotional connection. it does well to bring the reader into the details of the story, in a very specific way, but it lacks emotion. four sentences about a bottle rolling around on the floor of the passenger seat in the 2011 Toyota while driving in traffic is several sentences too long. the story and the characters, feel like doctors taking a clinical look at their own lives and all that's wrong with them. their behaviors are relatable and real, raw, but the use of language distracts and slows the pacing to a detrimental point.

who is this book for: a love of language literary, about a marriage, about a middle class and commonly unhappy couple trying to figure out what's next after the kids are gone.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was enough in this book that felt very honest and truthful about the state of marriage between 2 people after their kids move out. The author paints, in my opinion, an extremely insightful potrait of a woman who stumbled into marriage and motherhood and did a good job of it but now finds herself adrift. The dialogue was great and I really liked the lack of punctuation but I can see why other's found it distracting.

There were some parts that were slightly annoying and the ending was a little more abrupt than I would have liked but ultimately, the analysis that occurred between the characters was interesting.

[Pamela Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Private Means looks at love in its many manifestations - a married couple’s devotion, betrayal, rage, desire. The catalyst around which the story revolves is the search for a lost dog, and the author attempts to draw parallels to lost human relationships in all their stages. The human desire to love and be loved is examined in psychological terms (the husband is a shrink and the wife a bio-physicist) or in metaphysical terms as it relates to their professions. Mostly, I was lost until the last third of the book, when there was actually a plot.

[Kimya Nilsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea about a couple that started out with specific aggressive live goals. Those goals change as the woman let's go of her career to raise their twins. Now the children are gone form the home and the couple must redetermine there bond, if there is any. The tensions are heightened by the loss of the family dog, to which the woman is very attached, and the husband's inappropriate behavior in his psychiatry practice.

[Jackie Trimble · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book from a LitHub email giveaway. It was incredibly well written. I do enjoy LeFavour's voice and way to speak to the writer as if she were sharing the character's deepest thoughts - WHICH she was in this book. Indeed, some of this was a little too uncomfortable to read given we're somewhat new to the empty nest and through this COVID lockdown, have spent a little more time together than we probably need! :-)

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 out of 5 Stars!
I found it difficult to like the two main characters. They came across to me as extremely narcissistic and sel-centered. The story made me feel like a voyeur into a private broken life/marriage. It was not the ‘escape’ book I was expecting. Perhaps others will enjoy it more. Not a bad book but not my cup of tea. I received a complimentary copy from NetGalley and the publisher and this is my honest opinion.

[John Helmon]

Kinda, whiny self-absorbed 50-year-olds in a sexless marriage have recently sent their twin girls across the country to college. The woman has a one-off affair while the man, a psychiatrist, contemplates having one with a patient. Unhappy with each other but unable to contemplate a happy life without the other, they've trapped themselves in purgatory. So the woman dotes on her dog and the girls are spoiled when they visit. Then, thankfully, the book ends. 2/5

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the writing style but I'm a little weary of stories grounded in some foregone conclusion that marriage is inherently doomed to misery and mutual indifference. I would love to read about a couple with a happy, stable marriage overcoming a problem or challenge together. This wasn't that book. And honestly the New England summer house aesthetic is wildly unappealing to me in practice. But the writing style was lovely.

[Marmariposa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's another one I stuck with, not sure why. I kept wanting something from it and I guess I did like some of the scenes -- like the meeting in the loft, or her first date with a neighbor, or their vacation in the Berkshires and in the Hamptons. Did I like the characters? No, not at all. But I liked the setting -- a peak into those selfish, self-involved UWS types. At least in that respect she delivered.

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

First I would like to state that I have received this book through goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank the author for giving me this opportunity and honor in being able to read this book. When I received this book I began reading it at once. This book was an interesting book. I recommend this book to others.

[Denise Link]

I'm calling it, barely a chapter in. This is not the book for me during a long, boring pandemic (or maybe ever). The characters are grownups, which I thought I wanted to read about, but I care less than nothing about their missing dog, and so far they've done nothing to endear themselves to me, either. And I'm irrationally annoyed by the lack of quotation marks.

[Allison Kowalkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liz Gilbert recommended this book which is how I found it. It’s sexy and intimate and the writing feels very true. I like reading about inner thoughts and feelings about relationships, so I enjoyed the back-and-forth perspective of husband and wife within the same marriage and how each one experienced it.

[Kathleen Gallico · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book maybe a year and a half ago. I wish I could experience reading this book for the first time again. Some people might not appreciate it for this but I loved how it just felt like a person’s life. It was so regular and emotional, I adored it! I tell everyone it’s my favorite book now and I’ve been looking for more books like this. It’s so good, I recommend it highly

[Janeadams Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A carefully written domestic drama about a marriage, infidelity, and the interior lives of its central characters. Well observed worth flashes of poetic language, brilliant sex scenes and narrative drive.