Rodin's Debutante

Tommy Ogden a Gatsbyesque character living in a mansion outside robber-baron-era Chicago declines to give his wife the money to commission a bust of herself from the French master Rodin and announces instead his intention to endow a boysrsquo school Ogdenrsquos decision reverberates years later in the life of Lee Goodell whose coming of age is at the heart of Ward Justrsquos emotionally potent new novel Leersquos life decisionsmdashto become a sculptor to sojourn in the mean streets of the South Side to marry into the haute-intellectual culture of Hyde Parkmdashplay out against the crude glamour of midcentury Chicago Justrsquos signature skill of conveying emotional heft with few words is put into play as Lee confronts the meaning of his four years at Ogden Hall School under the purview in the school library of a bust known as Rodinrsquos Debutante And especially as he meets again a childhood friend the victim of a brutal sexual assault of which she has no memory It was a crime marking the end of Leersquos boyhood and the beginning of his understandingmdashso powerfully under the surface of Justrsquos masterly storymdashthat how and what we remember add up to nothing less than our very lives.