Vivian’s gallery gig in Rio de Janeiro is more than a job. She’s a curator, not just at work but in every aspect of her life. Her apartment has designer armchairs. Her wallet is Comme des Garçons. Everything is selected and arranged, even her friends, culled from Brazil’s richest families, who play the supporting cast in Vivian’s ongoing performance of self. In Vivian’s world, everything comes in excess, including her own caustic self-awareness. As she informs us, “I’m a misandrist and a misogynist,” but she is fond of gay men, “the one type of human you can get along with as equals.”
The gravity of real life breaks through Vivian’s ongoing act when she's confronted with an unexpected and awful proximity to police violence. Can she pause long enough to recast herself in a new role, one that fits her highly staged world and can account for the random and unpredictable?
Role Play examines the super-abundances of Brazilian elites, their art and ethics, and their monied ambivalence in the face of social inequality, machismo, and violence. As sharp and sparkling as broken champagne flutes, Clara Drummond’s prose is seductively frank and unflinching in its depiction of wealth's warping effects. Her third novel and her English-language debut, Role Play is a bold and hilarious book that places everything that affirms and informs the performance of self under a harsh spotlight.
- ISBN10 0374611289
- ISBN13 9780374611286
- Publish Date 15 July 2024
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 128
- Language English
- URL http://melia.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9780374611286