The Performance of Being Newland Archer

He tells Ellen he cannot love her unless he gives her up, and two chapters later he is standing at the altar. Roxane Gay tracks Newland Archer from the renunciation through the wedding, the honeymoon, and the first married summer, and names what she sees: a man performing renunciation, performing happiness, performing even the life of ideas, until a poor French tutor exposes the act. Then May opens a quiet campaign against her cousin, and a stolen Boston lunch puts the two people who should never be alone together at one table. The title is Gay's phrase, and she means all of it.