Payback A Novel

Quin Archer is the revenge-loving queen of the reality TV show Payback, and has dedicated her life to confronting and outing the guilty. But long before she was a star, Quin was an angry teenage student at a private New England girls’ school, whose closest confidant was her art teacher, Agnes. But when Quin (then known as Heidi) turned to Agnes for help in a moment of desperate need, Agnes’s stunned response devastated them both. Payback is a powerful tale of #MeToo misunderstanding, from a time before there was language to contain it, and of the reverberations of our actions across the years. It is a remarkable book about the precise weight of our words and deeds from a writer whose moral vision is deeply rewarding in its subtlety.

MARY GORDON is the author of nine novels, including Final Payments, The Love of My Youth, Pearl, and There Your Heart Lies; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs Circling My Mother and The Shadow Man; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.