Humans have been attempting to answer the question of what a good and virtuous life looks like since the beginning of time. In her sophomore novel, Virtue, Hermione Hoby takes on this very same concern, contextualized within the Trump era. The novel centers on Luca, a young man trying to distance himself from his middle America Colorado upbringing, while beginning a summer internship at a prestigious but stuffy literary magazine, “The New Old World” (a fictional stand in for publications like The Paris Review or The New Yorker). An adult Luca narrates the novel from a decade in the future, clearly still reeling from the fallout of this New York summer, in which he became enmeshed in various disparate and tenuous worlds. Luca is immediately seduced by an older couple he meets, Jason and Paula: Jason is a filmmaker and Paula an artist who something designs covers for ‘The New Old World”, and Luca can’t help but fall in step with their old money charm and neoliberal New York art scene bona fides. Jason and Paula live in the world that Luca is striving towards by working at the magazine, a world in which beauty, intellectualism, and art are celebrated, where gallery openings and book launch events are a part of one’s social calendar, alongside summers in Maine and other glamorous enclaves where the real world seems far away.
At the same time, Luca is similarly fascinated with Zara, a fellow intern at the magazine, and its only black employee. After the fallout from the election of Donald Trump and the resulting wave of social activism, Zara often finds herself as the only voice in the room demanding that the magazine responds to the current political climate with real action. The magazine has a lackluster history of publishing writers outside of a white male demographic, and many of the higher-ups at the publication are reticent to shake things up at all, mostly ignoring Zara’s pleas for action, no matter how well-worded or presented they are. Luca becomes transfixed with Zara, jealous of her linguistic talent and commitment to racial justice, which seems to be a part of the fabric of her being, unlike the many “woke” New Yorkers Luca is surrounded by.
But perhaps no character’s motives are as closely examined as Luca’s, while he constantly questions the unconvincing white allies he sees around him, he is also always interrogating his own motivations, wondering how he’s participating in this performative commitment to social justice that usually just results in posting a self-congratulatory Instagram photo of a protest. Luca remarks of the Trump presidency, “That was just what you did on weekends—brunch and protest—then you’d put it all on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or all of the above to prove you were doing your part”. Luca aspires to be as dedicated and earnest as Zara, but often finds himself falling short, choosing the comfort of his privilege and the cultured aesthetic life he dreams of rather than social activism.
Luca eventually chooses Jason and Paula over Zara, joining them on a trip to their summer home in Maine, where Zara and her cries for change feel very far away. He questions his decision, but for a few weeks he becomes fully immersed in the whimsical and opulent world of Paula and Jason, whose days are filled making big pancake breakfasts for their children, swimming in the ocean, painting, and going to bonfires and parades in their charming little town. There is a strange sort of sexual tension between the three: Luca’s desire for both Paula (and perhaps also Jason) is not just sexual, but also characterized by a yearning to be them, to have the freedom to take up as much space as them, to live as comfortably, and bask in the glow of adoration like they do. But then the summer haze that has settled is broken by the intrusion of political events: the white supremacist mob in Charlottesville kills two counter protesters, and then even more jarringly, Zara is involved in a protest with disastrous consequences. Luca is shaken by these events, but so are Jason and Paula, torn apart by the guilt of enjoying such opulent privileges while the world seems to be burning. So Luca leaves Maine, feeling totally wrecked and unsure of himself, destroyed by his attraction to Jason and Paula’s promise of a different life.
Hoby’s conjuring of this specific era in time is so dead on, as she incisively picks apart the ways in which the country felt so fractured by this event, and all of the social media outrage that rang so hollow and empty. In the character of Luca, Hoby perfectly encapsulates the struggle that may Americans had with the boundary between performative participation and real activism, and the difficulties that come with social upheaval. She never answers the questions she poses, but so incisively gets to the root of the anger and confusion that plagued that period. This novel is the smartest take I’ve yet to read on the Trump era, and the one that feels most honestly wrought from thoughtful engagement and literary instinct. Hoby sums up the animus of her novel so brilliantly, “We didn’t know what we were doing. We felt bad and we wanted to feel good, and that was all.” This novel is a must read for anyone grappling with these moral dilemmas (should probably be everyone), its also layered and nuanced enough to demand real engagement from its audience.