"A beautifully written story about all of the many different reasons we need love and are terrified to lose it. A terrific debut novel." -Clancy Martin, author of How to Sell "The protagonist and narrator of The Arriviste is that guy, the one you've probably thought of a thousand times lately while muttering the words 'the economy with a woeful, bewildered look on your face. He's the bastard whose fault it probably is, and the amazing thing about this book is the profound sympathy you feel for him on almost every page. He observes the world acutely, he has vigorous and striking thoughts, he yearns: this guy has a soul, to which this antic and elegiac, beautifully written novel bears unforgettable witness." - Matthew Sharpe, author of Jamestown and You Were Wrong If by 1970 I had started to slip, it wasn't by much. To make more of the decline would be easy: exaggeration resonates in candor. My income had fallen, though not to any depth. That would have required a spectacular reversal, and, contrary impulses notwithstanding, I seem to avoid spectacular actions of any kind. I still had plenty of money in 1970, more than my neighbors could reasonably hope to come by, yet not so much anymore that I could forget them. My lawn was no longer quite big enoush nor my hedges high enoush... ... so begins The Arriviste, in which Neil Fox laments the disappearance of his Long Island Arcadia even as he has a hand in the process. As a young man, he'd made a healthy living on heads-I-win-tails-you-lose venture capital deals, and along the way developed an unyielding ambition. Now, years later, that same cunning has calcified into a principled isolation, which Neil hopes to preserve even as a new neighbor, Bud Younger, builds his home on a lot that Neil himself once owned. But when Neil's wife moves out, Bud draws Neil in with his solicitude. A bottle and a ride in an Alfa Romeo later, they have an off-shore business partnership and a woman between them- to Neil's dismay and also, possibly, his advantage. Tracing one man's longing for his own estate against a nation's obsession with the ephemeral security offered by wealth, The Arriviste is a gripping and timeless tale of influence, power, and isolation.