Martin Bauman: or, A Sure Thing

David Leavitt's deliciously sharp new novel is a multilayered dissection of literary and sexual mores in the get-ahead eighties, when outrageous success lay seductively within reach of any young writer ambitious enough to grab it.

At the dawn of the Reagan era, Martin Bauman—nineteen, clever, talented, and insecure—is enrolled at a prestigious college with a hard-won place under the tutelage of the legendary and enigmatic Stanley Flint, a man who can make or break careers with the flick of a...