Still waters run deep. The idyllic boring uppercrust neighborhood of Nearwater, Connecticut has a way of smothering nonconformity. Louisa Rader should know. An artist who dreamed big as a young woman, she has now shelved ambition for motherhood to preteen Sylvie and being the wife of a successful architect. A teen artist in town, Gabriel, exploits this vulnerability and Sylvie’s growing ennui, in favor of his own activist causes. Acampora’s immense gifts lie in taking boring suburbia – at a time when the plight of rich white people elicits little sympathy – and turning it into a seething dark weapon. Propulsive reading.
