Magazine calls “The highbrow humanist name-dropping book of the summer.” The remarkable first novel by Chandler Burr, the scent critic and author of is funny, smart, and provocative—an extraordinarily ambitious work of fiction that succeeds on many different levels. It is a book David Ebershoff, (author of ) enthusiastically recommends “for anyone who defiantly clings to the belief that a book can change our lives.”