Something Rotten - by Andrew Lipstein (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR
Named a Top 10 Book of the Year by Our Culture magazine
Named a Publishers Weekly Editors' Pick
A most anticipated book from New York - Bustle - Lit Hub - The Millions - Foreign Policy - Our Culture - & more

In his provocative, crackling new novel, Andrew Lipstein spins a wicked web through the heart of Copenhagen. You'll question everyone and everything--even the very nature of truth.

Cecilie is a fed-up New York Times reporter. Her husband, Reuben, is a disgraced former NPR host and grudging stay-at-home dad. Neither can wait to flee New York to spend the summer in Copenhagen, Denmark, Cecilie's hometown. But their vacation begins to turn inside out as soon as they land: Cecilie's first love, Jonas, has been diagnosed with a rare, fatal illness. All of Cecilie's friends are desperate to get him help--except for Mikkel, a high-powered journalist who happens to be the only one Jonas will listen to.

Mikkel's influence quickly extends to Reuben, who's not only intoxicated by Mikkel's charm, but discovers in him a new model of masculinity--one he found hopelessly absent in America. As Mikkel indoctrinates Reuben with ever more depraved stunts, Reuben senses something is seriously amiss. Cecilie, too, begins to question who to trust--even herself. Drawn in by the gravity of the past, she can't help but stray onto the road not taken.

A twisting, thrilling tale of loyalty and deceit, lovers and fools, Something Rotten proves that sometimes to be kind you have to be cruel beyond belief.

Review Quotes

"Something Rotten. . . cribs some of [Hamlet's] most delicious themes: the relationship between fathers and sons, the utility of virtue in a world that seems fueled by deceit, and, finally, what it means to be true to oneself when truth itself is up for debate. . . The real fun of Something Rotten though, lies in the concentric deceptions that Reuben and Cecilie both uncover and perpetrate. At heart, this is a book about deceit, about double-crossing and discovering the difference between abstract and tangible truth." --Melissa Kirsch, The New York Times

"A simmering psychological novel about modern masculinity that tiptoes into thriller territory." -- New York Magazine

"Lipstein's greatest strength is his acute awareness of the deep sense of banality and emptiness that pervades so much of the lives of his yuppie-millennial characters ... This narrative mode makes for a precise social critique, capturing the gulf between emotion itself and the mediated, practiced recognition thereof in a deliberately sanitized monotone . . . it reveals a deeper truth about America's current social climate." --Oscar Dorr, The Nation

"[F]ascinating . . . tense . . . The revelations, when they come, are satisfying, and meaty considerations of ethics and truth round out the novel's entertaining depiction of an American innocent abroad and his European Svengali. This razor-sharp morality tale is Lipstein's best yet." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Lipstein is such a gifted writer that he shifts nimbly between Reuben's and Cecilie's inner worlds. Some of the most memorable moments in the book vividly capture the exhaustion and exhilaration of being a new parent, or the way visiting somewhere new can open your eyes to different possibilities. He is adept, too, at blistering the smug fecklessness of his social class: progressives who carefully cultivate the 'correct' beliefs while Republicans are busy dismantling the country. It's a critique that will hit close to home for many of his readers." --The Washington Post

"Nails the humorous culture clashes between an expat American and his adopted Danish community." -- NPR

"One of Lipstein's gifts is his slipperiness--just as the reader feels a character's foibles are being mocked or even pitied, the target shapeshifts, the moral questions twisting and dissolving . . . . An interrogation of the nature of truth, virtue, and reality, cloaked as a page-turning novel of escalating crises." --Kirkus Reviews

"Schadenfreude--all the satisfaction of watching a questionable character squirm -- is often even better in fiction: There's no real-life guilt to wrestle down. That's partly why I enjoyed Andrew Lipstein's latest novel, Something Rotten, so much . . . With his new book, Lipstein adds to his universe of morally sticky scenarios; since 2022 he's published three novels full of greedy, venal, pliant and somehow pitiable men." --The New York Times Books Newsletter

"[Lipstein] can always be counted on to be sharp and sneaky, somehow both critical and warm, and often ridiculously funny while skewering home a hard truth or two, and therefore he is the first person I would trust to write a book like this one." --Lit Hub

"Lipstein's novels are unique in their execution, combining an old-school, plot-driven sensibility with unabashedly zeitgeisty ideas. . . In a moment that's so polarized, Lipstein's choice to operate in straightforward realism feels almost radical." --The Point

"In its exploration of how to live morally and manly, Lipstein's witty and provocative Something Rotten is a rollicking, entertaining read--and always with a finger on the pulse." --Sam Franzini, Our Culture

"A deeply intelligent, crackling novel full of wit and dark humour. Put this one on your must-reads for 2025." -- Cult MTL

"Andrew Lipstein seems to have ridden onto the literary scene aboard some sort of full strength moral tornado. Each of his novels present thorny ethical questions, and offer no easy answers." --The Racket

"Andrew Lipstein's third excellent novel Something Rotten wonders how far we'll go when we're assured of our own convictions, America's gendered divide, and the nature of truth itself. Who in this tangled web of lies are we supposed to believe, and might the author himself be culpable?" --Hobart

"Revelatory ... very thought-provoking ... It is impossible to organize characters -- and their actions -- neatly into the categories of right and wrong in a world this complicated." --The Daily Progress

"Something Rotten is (characteristically, for this author) an irreverent book; often funny, at times caustic. Andrew Lipstein's refreshingly frank third novel probes the more discomfiting questions--about marriage and fidelity, fathers and sons, cancel culture and propriety, sex and gender, ambition and motivation--of modern life."--Rumaan Alam, author of Entitlement

"My favorite kind of book--a funny, wise, aching story about cross-cultural confusion and twenty-first century masculinity. It's personal and global in equal measure." --Jesse Eisenberg, actor and director

"What begins as a summer escape ends as a trial by fire as a young couple grapples with their biggest mistakes, their most heartbreaking inner demons, and their sneaking suspicion that the way they've been living is entirely wrong. A bold and riveting new novel about the search for truth when truth lingers maddeningly out of reach. I loved it." --Nathan Hill, author of Wellness and The Nix

"Few novels are willing to confront the stormy waters that lie between personhood, parenthood, the imagined life, and reality. Our best novelists have it all right in front of them, if they possess the talent to look up and see. There may be something rotten in the state of Denmark, or the state of manhood, but the net result in Something Rotten is a book about a vacation that is both outrageous and very funny. Sometimes, in these ultra-serious times, we are apt to forget that fiction, in its origins, is a comic form. Andrew Lipstein provides a reminder, and his latest novel is a brilliant antidote to the nonsense of now." --Andrew O'Hagan, author of Caledonian Road

"A riveting, original story of fatherhood and masculinity and the ways our cultural narratives can deform both. In pursuit of deeper truths, Lipstein fills his book with psychological insight, surprising twists, and gorgeous writing." --Lexi Freiman, author of The Book of Ayn

"Something Rotten is an outraged and up-to-the-minute satire of American masculinity and nationalism that cleverly uses its setting--Copenhagen, Denmark--as a dark mirror to America's psychoses. A funny, moving, and surprising bicontinental novel." --Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs

"Andrew Lipstein's Something Rotten follows a man who's recently been canceled--a word that had 'long become meaningless . . . a relic from another time, like yuppie, hipster, millennial'--and his exhausted wife as they flee New York with their baby for a summer in Copenhagen. There, Lipstein weaves a twisty tale exploring masculinity, deceit, and love with cutting precision." --Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain

About the Author