Hammer

January 17, 2022
Following We Begin Our Ascent, a story of a Tour de France rider, Reed casts his appraising eye on the equally cutthroat worlds of modern art and Russian politics in this well-observed if uneven outing. It opens with a bang, as Martin, an auction house employee, watches Russian oligarch Oleg Gorelov win a Basquiat painting after driving the bidding up to nearly $9 million. Oleg’s wife, Marina, an old college friend of Martin’s, secures Martin an invitation to the Russian’s art bunker, which houses a lost painting by the Ukrainian avant-garde painter Kazimir Malevich, who ran afoul of the Stalin regime. Martin, who would like nothing more than to secure a sale of Oleg’s art collection for his auction house, is an unassuming, almost purposely bland “puppy” figure who wins Oleg’s trust even as he begins an affair with Marina. Oleg, meanwhile, considers selling his art to fund a quixotic campaign to unseat Vladimir Putin. The plot simmers too long, muting the impact of the characters’ betrayals and machinations, but Reed is consistently excellent in his takes on art, money, and the ruthlessness of the auction house business: “We’re like vampires. We’re well-dressed. We’re polite. But in the end, we’ll need to feed,” says Martin’s boss. In the end this cool, restrained work doesn’t quite reach the heat of the art market it depicts. Agent: Amelia Atlas, ICM Partners.

February 15, 2022
Martin, a knowledgeable yet still fresh-faced art auctioneer, is thrust into the highly politicized and extravagantly rich world of Oleg, an expat Russian oligarch. Employed at a prestigious London auction house, Martin recognizes the oligarch's wife, Marina, as an old college friend. Oleg, having just bought a Basquiat painting for several million pounds, invites Martin to his English country home with its basement bunker full of priceless art collected over the years with his ever-growing riches following the fall of the Soviet Union. Political intrigue, potential scandal, and a fair amount of globe-trotting pushes Martin's sudden career trajectory as he befriends Oleg in the hopes of securing the collection for an auction-house sale. Chapters are narrated from each character's perspective as they are forced to reconcile their personal histories with their shifting circumstances. At the heart of Reed's second novel, following We Begin Our Ascent (2018), is an appreciation of art that underlies events as well as the most minute details of relationships. A timely tale in its outlying politics and a hardened critique of the ever-commodified world.

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Starred review from February 1, 2022
An art auctioneer gets entangled with a Russian oligarch. It's 2013, and Martin, a junior specialist at a posh London auction house, spends his days wheeling and dealing with art-collecting elites and his evenings drinking beer in a grubby basement apartment with his depressed musician roommate. Then one evening Oleg Gorelov--a Russian oligarch with a checkered past and a peerless art collection--comes into the house and casually buys a Basquiat for 10 million pounds. Oleg's far younger wife, Marina, is Martin's old college friend, and in the wake of the sale, she and Martin resume their acquaintance. This gives Martin access to Oleg, who eventually shows Martin a work by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich that art historians believed lost. If Martin can acquire that painting for sale by the house, it will drastically boost his career. But Martin's growing proximity to the Gorelovs soon gets complicated: First, his friendship with Marina evolves into something they have to hide; then Oleg decides he's going to remake himself (and the country he helped plunder) by challenging Putin's reign and running for president on a reformist platform. Reed's riveting second novel is at once a romance, a geopolitical thriller, a meditation on art, and an investigation of the moral compromises that everyone makes in the gravitational presence of wealth. Reed does a masterful job of complicating his characters' motivations. Does Marina feel something special for Martin, or is she just dissatisfied with Oleg? Can Martin's interests in Marina be uncoupled from his interest in Oleg's art collection? To what extent is Martin's love of painters like Malevich influenced by his knowledge of the insane value that the art market places on Malevich's work? Are Oleg's reformist ambitions motivated by a sincere regret about the nation-ruining side effects of his ruthless accumulation of wealth, or is he just nostalgic for the "wild years" when he could profit from his visions unencumbered by weak constraints like guilt? Richly textured, compulsively readable, and brilliant throughout.

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