The Epicure’s Lament (2009)

In-fiction date: 10/9/2001

Hugo Whittier begins his journal on October 9th in the decaying family mansion Waverly on the Hudson River, where he lives alone as a self-imposed exile, smoking himself toward an early death by a condition that makes nicotine potentially lethal. Kate Christensen's novel is built from Hugo's sardonic notebook entries: a forty-year-old black sheep cataloguing his past with equal parts wit and self-destruction.