Misconception: A Novel (Books That Changed the World)

By: Ryan Boudinot

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Synopsis: Former sweethearts revisit their teenage love—and their conflicting memories of the past—in this &“gem of a first novel&” (Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children). In between business in Iceland and home in Silicon Valley, Cedar Rivers has come to Albany, New York, to meet a woman he hasn&’t seen in twenty years. When he knew her, Kat was a cute proto-Goth with chipped black nail polish. Now she&’s a literary up-and-comer who has summoned him to vet her new memoir—an account of the summer they were sweethearts. And she&’s written parts of it from his point of view. Through an intense weekend in a snowed-in motel room, Cedar and Kat relive their most painful memories: Before they had a chance at first love, Kat was dragged off on a family sailing trip by her mother and her mother&’s new fiancé. Kat returned with a secret, one which—when she shared it with Cedar—set off a series of miscalculated assumptions that snowballed into a startlingly tragic incident. A tender, absurd, and heartbreaking novel about the unintended consequences of first love and bad judgment, Misconception slyly questions the way we narrate our memories and assign culpability.