Wilhelmina “Will” Miles didn’t grow up wanting to become a writer. Her primary longing in her childhood and adolescent years was for a father. 

Raised by a single mother who claimed not to know the name of Will’s father, Will grew up in a working-class northern Michigan town overshadowed by Rosendale, the prestigious arts academy where her mother is on the housekeeping staff. Will, who often accompanies her mother to work, is drawn to how its students’ lives are so very different from her own. 

"FAMOUS MEN is not a book with easy answers, but that makes it an outstanding choice for book club discussions and debates. Julie Buntin has written a #MeToo novel that carries far more sophistication and moral subtleties than many."

Will also becomes fixated on Rosendale’s most illustrious graduate, Nathaniel Fellow, who got his start writing poems for Rosendale’s literary magazine but now is a prize-winning poet, novelist and memoirist, teaching in the MFA program at a prestigious New York City university. His books are the only ones on Will’s mother’s shelf, and when Will encounters a provocative inscription in one of them, she convinces herself that maybe Nathaniel is her unknown father. 

When a horrific high school scandal and a failed attempt to apply to Rosendale make Will’s remaining Michigan years nearly unbearable, she uses a successful stint in community college as a basis to transfer to a different NYC school. Once there, she orchestrates things so that her path and Nathaniel’s cross within days of her arrival in the city. She even manages to make such a positive impression that Nathaniel hires her as his new assistant, after his last one left rather abruptly. Will throws herself into the work wholeheartedly, eager to understand this man who may help fill her missing pieces. They do develop a relationship, but it’s not exactly what Will once imagined. 

What unfolds is an intricate and morally ambiguous account of the next several years of Will’s life. Readers likely will be dismayed by the ways in which Nathaniel takes advantage of Will --- her youth, her attractiveness, her economic instability, her growing desire to pursue her own career in writing. But others may recognize that Nathaniel, despite his countless flaws, does still serve as an important mentor to Will. He pushes her to discover her own voice, even if that voice only finds its full fruition on the page, not in the way she lives her life. 

When one of Will’s best friends threatens to expose Nathaniel’s history of harassing his female students, Will feels trapped. Not only does she feel personally and professionally indebted to Nathaniel, if she does what she knows she should do and move out of his apartment, she’ll have nowhere else to go.

FAMOUS MEN is not a book with easy answers, but that makes it an outstanding choice for book club discussions and debates. Julie Buntin has written a #MeToo novel that carries far more sophistication and moral subtleties than many. It might cause readers to confront their own assumptions about how young women sometimes view their position in relation to famous men.