Tripping Arcadia, Kit Mayquist

The older I get, the more cynical I become about the consciences of the very rich. Used to be when fictional rich people were cartoonishly evil, I would think it was unrealistic. Now I’m like, no, actually, that sounds right. Rich people probably do poison each other at parties for shits and giggles. Tripping Arcadia had my number from the beginning by telling me in the introduction that a whole bunch of amoral rich people were probably going to die. Like, way to reel me in, book! Not just telling me the end before I read the middle, but promising me that some fictional rich people were going to get a comeuppance. OF DEATH.¹

Lena has come back to the US after some time spent happily with her aunt, a renowned herbalist, in Italy. Her father has been laid off without severance, and an inadequately treated injury has left him with an addiction to pain pills. Lena’s expected to get a job ASAP and start supporting her family, which is why she accepts a position as a medical assistant to the wealthy Verdeau family’s in-house doctor. The doctor, Prosenko, mainly tends to the Verdeau son and heir, Jonathan, who’s afflicted with an unnamed, but debilitating, medical condition and — separately? — never seems to stop drinking. The longer Lena works with the family, attending their hideously decadent rich-people parties, the angrier she becomes at their callous disregard for anyone who isn’t them. And so she concocts a plan for revenge, using her medical knowledge and, more specifically, her aunt’s research on *dramatic hand gestures* POISON.

In the many, many years since I first read and loved The Secret History, years in which I have sought unceasingly for a book that would hit me the same way, I have learned that I am best served by books with similar vibes but very different plots. Pretty much, Gothic novels. Gothic novels is what I want. I respect and thank Kit Mayquist for understanding what the people want and putting the words A GOTHIC NOVEL right there on the cover. Gothic indeed it is, from the opening few paragraphs where the narrator is all last-night-I-dreamt-I-went-to-Manderley-again about it straight through to the ending, in which the question is posed “can we ever be free?” and the answer at time of writing is a shrug emoji. In the middle are a bunch of rich-people parties in the Berkshires that are so decadent they require an on-call doctor. These happen with sufficient regularity to ensure that you’re never going to be able to go too deep down the “rich people are people too” rabbit hole of your compassionate brain, because Mayquist is always reminding you that these guys wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire and instead would probably put it on their Instagram Stories before snorting your ashes like cocaine.

What I’m saying is, the vibes are impeccable.

(Sidebar: Have y’all noticed that I’ve been saying versions of “the vibes are impeccable” about a lot of my books lately? Do we think that books are moving in a more vibey direction than in years past, or is it more that I have gotten better about finding books with vibes that suit me? I kind of like the first option, don’t you? Like, the authors all grew up on fanfiction and WB dramas and now they’re bringing that energy to their books. I respect it. Long live the vibe shift.²)

One of the allures of the gothic novel is that the fresh-faced ingenue (who comes of poorish, sometimes-honest parents) sinks deeper and deeper into complicity with whatever rich-people nonsense is happening around them. The first time Lena attends a decadent party, she gets a bonus check of several thousand dollars, for a single night’s work, which frees her up to buy her own shitty car and make a start at paying down her student loans. Even as you know she should get out, you can’t deny the allure of the minor freedom that six thousand dollars gives her. She doesn’t even have to make excuses for herself because the reader is already doing it for her: Just a few more parties like that to stabilize her and then she can work on trying to get out.

Except, of course, nobody can ever just get out. No sooner does she start to think Maybe This Is It than the beautiful, alluring Verdeau daughter, Audrey, asks for her help in figuring out what’s wrong with her brother Jonathan. Around the same time, the horrible Verdeau father ropes her into doing something very unethical but very well paid, and the thing about Lena’s circumstances is that she’s just not in a position to say no to either one of them. Reluctantly, she agrees to both proposals, which only leads her deeper into the kind of trouble rich people have to pay thousands of dollars to get themselves out of.

If I had one complaint about Tripping Arcadia, it’s that the reveals at the end were pretty confusing. A lot of people are doing a lot of nefarious things and it was like a game of three-card monte trying to keep track of who had access to which poisons and which poisoners and whom they wanted to hurt or kill and why. Apart from that, it was one of those near-perfect reading experiences where it’s the exact book you wanted at the exact moment you wanted it. Kit Mayquist’s debut is fun, dark, soapy, bloody, and a promising start to their (hopefully long and fruitful) authorial career.