In The Futures, Anna Pitoniak has the guts to write a pair of protagonists, Julia and Evan, who are not very smart or farsighted. They're young, they're obviously attractive, they're clever enough, they're talented enough; they work as hard as they need to at what they think they need to be doing. They're good kids! But they're hopelessly naive, each of them highly privileged in their own way; Evan a little more aspirational, Julia a little more entitled, and neither sees much outside of their narrow world of Ivy League universities and downtown parties. What Pitoniak does that feels deft is deny Julia and Evan insight into the consequences of enjoying their privilege until they find themselves too deeply ensnared in the darker movements of the systems that help keep their class aloft.
Pitoniak isn't cruel. She allows her protagonists to seek some absolution, to make motions toward a humbler state of grace and forgiveness before the novel's end. But the writing is on the walls for Julia and Evan before the first hundred pages of the novel is up. Despite some occasionally hard-to-follow jump cuts in chronology, what keeps the reader engaged as the couple sink ever more deeply into a monied world of greed and questionable motivations is the suspense of wondering when the other shoe will drop.
The novel could have probed the foundations of Evan and Julia's relationship a little more deeply; the underlying strengths of their relationship aren't always made clear. But overall Pitoniak has created a memorable pair of characters through whom the reader witnesses the unfolding of Wall Street's 2008 financial crisis: young adults, hapless without being blameless for the roles they take on in pursuit of their own bright futures.
Book details:
The Futures
by Anna Pitoniak
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: January 17, 2017
ISBN: 9780316354172
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