BOOKMARK: Security

Local writer Stephen Amidon sets his latest novel, Security, right here in western Massachusetts, in the fictional college town of Stoneleigh—a hybrid of Williamstown and Great Barrington, one suspects. Amidon creates a modern day, more authentic Peyton Place, portraying a broad cast of townspeople in a multi-point-of-view approach that uncovers well-guarded secrets and unspoken desires: think of a twenty-first century Edward Hopper for a visual cue.

Author of the critically acclaimed Human Capital, Amidon is an enormously gifted writer recalling Tom Perrotta, only without the breakout book or movie deals that Perrotta secured with Election and Little Children. Amidon’s rich mix of characters in Security, from the wealthy Doyle Cutler to the middle-class Edward Inman, owner of Stoneleigh’s Sentinel Security, to a single mother in the throes of dealing with her troubled teenage son to a professor having an affair with one of his students, make up a world that rings both true and familiar. [SEPTEMBER 2009]
 

THE GOODS

Security
By Stephen Amidon
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
www.fsgbooks.com