Adam Langer
This is a novel so rivetingly plotted and beautifully written that you forget its shopworn premise…[Maksik] writes about the moral ambiguity of Will's circumstances with dazzling clarity and impressive philosophical rigor. The contrasting perspectives of Mr. Maksik's trio of narrators—each telling his or her story in the past tense from a time when the events described have faded in importance—add to the complexity and the suspense.
—The New York Times
Sunday Times (London)
A superb debut novel.”
New York Times bestselling author Alice Sebold
One of the most engaged reads I’ve had in years.”
New York Times
A novel rivetingly plotted and beautifully written…[Maksik] writes about the moral ambiguity of Will’s circumstances with dazzling clarity and impressive philosophical rigor.”
From the Publisher
"Both intelligent and intellectual, this is both a tribute to brilliant teachers and a cautionary tale of their imperfections." ---Kirkus Starred Review
-Tom Jenks
"Alexander Maksik's first novel, You Deserve Nothing, is a thoroughly engaging, passionate, and challenging read that finely walks the line between morality and amorality. In a society, and at a time, when individual identity is so closely tied to collective narcissism, Maksik's novel asks what are the true sources of selfworth? And how shall we live?"
-Ben Fountain
"Maksik's superb novel takes on the most fundamental question-how are we supposed to live?-with a freshness and urgency that are nothing short of masterful. This is a gorgeous book, as honest and rich a depiction of life's contradictions as I've encountered in many years."
-Susanna Moore
"A provocative, constantly surprising, and original novel. This is a thrilling debut."
-John Burnham Schwartz
"You Deserve Nothing rings true from first page to last. Here is a writer who understands why the artful telling of a difficult story is a brave and important thing to do. Read this book."
-Tom Perrotta
"You Deserve Nothing is a powerful, absorbing novel about a charismatic expatriate teacher and the students whose lives he transforms, for better and worse. Alexander Maksik is an unusually gifted writer."
-A.M. Homes
"Alexander Maksik deftly evokes the beauty and pathos of Paris, and the story of Will, Gilad and Marie-each compelled towards moral and sexual awakening- is at once dark and luminous. This is a book to be read all at once with a glass of wine in a café or a cup of tea while tucked safely in bed."
-Alice Sebold
"One of the most engaged reads I've had in years."
Kirkus Reviews
A novel that examines the relationship between the public and shared experience of a lively—even magical—classroom, and the private world of a gifted but flawed teacher.
Largely a character study of Will Silver, master teacher at the International School of France in Paris, the novel advances its narrative through multiple perspectives, much as Faulkner does in As I Lay Dying, one of the texts Will insists his students read. Will is a charismatic English teacher, one of those rare few who inspire a Dead Poets Society–typecult among the seniors in his philosophy and literature seminar. Based on their readings of Sartre, Camus, Faulkner, Shakespeare and Keats, he urges his students to raise questions about the way they live their lives and has them confront their own existential freedom and moral choices. But Will is caught in the irony of his own moral choices when he feels attracted to Marie de Cléry, a student at the school, and begins a torrid sexual relationship with her. Marie is best friends with Ariel, which is to say they have a volatile, love-hate relationship driven both by envy and by jealousy, and it's clear that Ariel will do anything to pull Will down. While much of the narrative burden of the novel is assumed by Will and Marie, Maksik also provides views of other students, especially Gilad, whose own homoerotic attraction to Will complicates his take on things. Some of the best scenes in the novel involve the reconstruction of the philosophical give-and-take of his classroom, Will's efforts to get his students to think and to make the literature their own. And despite the administration's understandable desire to turn Will into a monster who's preyed upon a vulnerable young woman, he remains sympathetic to the end.
Both intelligent and intellectual, this is both a tribute to brilliant teachers and a cautionary tale of their imperfections.
