Madeline McKnight Signs Off (publication day November 3, 2027) is Evan Brooke’s debut novel, and I look forward to many more from her. Considering I have a high tolerance for stories involving grief and main characters with cancer, I was delighted by the story, but it may not be for people who can’t tolerate black humor and don’t want to read about loss.
Madeline McKnight is a difficult person, but a great character — she is a wealthy, retired analyst known as the “Bitch of Wall Street” — whose sarcoma has just returned, leaving her with months to live. She’s obsessed with starting a museum to Hetty Green, a real-life financial whiz from the Gilded Age, ensuring that it opens before her time is up. She has burned most of the bridges in her life, including her childhood best friend, exes, and former co-workers, and relies almost entirely on Lee, her neighbor and lover, and their dog, a Newfoundland named Hopie. Madeline decides to make an offer that can’t be refused to the daughter, Bri, of her former best friend.
Bri is trying to get through nursing school on her own after her mother, still reeling from Madeline’s betrayal more than a decade before, takes her college money for drugs and alcohol. But every day is a struggle. When she gets the email from Madeline, she thinks the generous weekly salary and $2 million bonus if Madeline lives to see the opening of the Hetty Green museum is a scam. But fresh off of a breakup, she doesn’t really have anything to lose so she figures she might as well try it at least for a week or two.
So Bri goes to Madeline’s house/ lodge in the Poconos. As a city girl, she’s not used to the woods, and she is just about as prickly as Madeline. As time goes on, they do develop a relationship through Hopie and through Madeline teaching Bri how to fly fish, as Madeline is a master tyer of flies and observer of rivers, making her an expert fly fisherwoman, as taught by her mother.
Many of Madeline’s chapters are told in the format of business reports, which is a cute, creative way to tell the story.
I really loved it. I consider it weight-neutral, as I didn’t note any descriptions that were explicitly anti-fat.
