Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann, Picador, $27.99
Picador bid high on Tigers in Red Weather winning an eight-way international auction to land a six-figure two book deal with debut American author Liza Klaussman, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Moby Dick author Herman Melville.
But Editorial Director Kate Harvey was never in any doubt about her purchase. As the manuscript was passed from one colleague to another, “It spread around the company like electricity,” she says.
And certainly there is something exciting and compulsively sinister about this well-written tale of glossy East Coast American life which echoes Great Gatsby mixed with Ian McEwan’s Atonement and a touch of Mad Men.
It’s also a book with a near perfect pitch steering a commercially smart line between sassy book club talking point and engrossing beach read.
Nick and her cousin Helena have halcyon childhood memories of a giddy jazz age adolescence on their family estate Tiger’s House in Martha’s Vineyard.
The action now flits around between the last days of the Second World War, the Fifties and the Sixties and is delivered by five key characters, each adding a new level of drama to a boiling pot of passions, dark betrayal and a brutal murder.
Following the war Helena is set to embark on a glamorous new life in Hollywood with her film maker husband and Nick is set to welcome back her recently wed beau from the front line.
But as the tale deepens we discover there’s a lot more at play than love and perfectly mixed martinis.
Multiple voice plots can be annoyingly repetitive but here with none of the characters entirely trustworthy and a landscape of sneaky secrecy we crave to hear another side to the story, and it is the last section, authored by Helena’s creepy son Ed that delivers the most shocking drum rolls.
About the Author: Liza Klaussmann
Born in New York City Liza Klaussmann spent her summers in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, the inspiration for the setting of Tigers in Red Weather.
The daughter of a venture capitalist and energy investor father and senior vice president of Christie’s auction house mother, Liza describes her childhood as “charmed and complicated”.
Now 36, Liza was interested in writing stories from the age of seven and says her paradoxical grandmother was her muse for this debut novel.
The bidding war for the book was she says “insane. I honestly couldn’t believe my luck”.
She is now working on a second novel, living in London with her dog, Bob, but still escaping to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
