eMUSIC Q&A: MARTHA MCPHEE
The fair citizens of New York City are obsessed with many things: art, music, books, food, movies, fashion, sports and extremely tall buildings. But hovering at the top of that list, perhaps because, for better or worse, it makes all of the other things go round, is money. And with that obsession comes a whole mess of emotions — and we’ll spare you that list, because it’s not just New Yorkers that lay claim to that funny illness; it is a universal disease, the money sickness.
Which is why novelist Martha McPhee’s fourth novel, Dear Money, manages to be so relevant to such a vast readership — even though it is set in New York, with its novelists and mortgage traders and Met parties and artist lofts in Williamsburg. Let us not forget also the quaint Maine summer home, which the book’s narrator, the mid-list novelist India Palmer, covets from the very beginning of the book, just before she meets Win Johns, the Wall Street trader, who offers her a chance to join his firm and change her life forever. Which, to everyone’s great surprise, she does.
THANK YOU, JAMI ATTENBERG
MARTHA McPHEE 