A TIME TO BE BORN, Author DAWN POWELL's scathing social commentary is evergreen

A TIME TO BE BORN
DAWN POWELL
Pushkin Press Classics (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A gorgeous new paperback of Dawn Powell’s razor-sharp comedy of manners, following a glittering tale of ambition and betrayal in prewar New York City.

“Few books have so bitingly and energetically captured the hunger for status and success that animate the city and enrage so many.” — The New York Times

Deemed “wittier than Dorothy Parker, [and able to] dissect the rich better than F. Scott Fitzgerald” (The New York Times Book Review), Dawn Powell earns her place as one of America’s great novelists with this biting satire of a wealthy, self-involved publisher and his scheming novelist wife.

Amanda Keeler has clawed her way out of the backwaters of Ohio and into the affections of Julien Evans, New York’s most powerful newspaper tycoon. With his ex-wife vanquished, Amanda reigns over their Fifth Avenue mansion, publishing wildly successful (ghostwritten) novels, charming guests at martini-soaked parties and furiously fending off Julien’s pesky advances.

That’s until the past comes knocking in the form of Vicky Haven, a timid school friend desperate for reinvention. Ever the strategist, Amanda lands Vicky a job in listings and a studio apartment—perfect for Amanda’s daytime trysts with old flame, Ken Saunders. But matters of the heart rarely follow orders. When Vicky begins to wise up to her scheme, and sets her own sights on Ken, she ignites a love triangle that threatens to topple Amanda’s carefully constructed empire.

Scathingly funny and irresistibly glamorous, A Time to be Born is a timeless portrait of social climbing, set in a 1940s Manhattan rife with backstabbing charm, brittle friendships and women who always land on their feet–heels first. Reissued in a stunning new package, it is the perfect introduction to Dawn Powell’s wicked wit and unsparing eye, guaranteed to delight both established fans and new readers alike.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: My mother loved The Locusts Have No King and Angels on Toast. She always said it was unkind of Dawn Powell to make her bitches so funny, because in the end it was bitchiness or bust in these women's lives. I've read Edmund Wilson's famous (I think dismissive) "praise" for her writing that her audience...women...never cottoned on to her writing in droves because there was no one to relate to.

That did not age well, Mr. Wilson. It's misogynistic even for a very openly misogynistic age. My own read of the literary marketplace's lukewarm reception of Powell has more to do with my mother's observation that the women were bitches first and foremost: made up of 90% bitchiness, 8% ambition, and 2% fashion. It gets wearing when the glossy surfaces deliver gloss gloss and more shiny gloss. This takedown of Clare Boothe Luce is honest, unsparing, based in the author's cold phony-flensing eye's most well-illuminated view of a woman whose substance could never fill out the image she projected. It was one of Powell's few hot-selling titles on that basis.

But in 2026, most all y'all need to use Wikipedia to know who she is. This vitiates the power of a takedown, a roman à clef of bitter and contemptuous thoroughness, a book-length Vanity Fair hit piece. I think it's delicious. I think most people will read the sentences and enjoy the bitchery, the evocation of a vanished world of unquestionable elite power, no backfooting in this story until we get into the bedroom...it's wonderful at pitting women against each other over a man neither should even notice still less grace with their desires but he was A Man in a time that was enough.

I don't see that catching fire in today's social climate. It's out of step in 2026. It was cold, unfeeling, in 1942; and now it's a relic of a time so distant as to be semi-mythical. Because it is an evocation of coldness, fame, and the callous using of people, it really should work as a reminder that the same kind of people doing the same kind of social climbing are hollow images who stand bestride our world like they did Powell's, and are now forgotten...well, it ought to inspire us to see through them, to see the vapors they conjure for what they are.

It has the uphill battle of ongoing misogyny. It's still true that piercing social commentary is taken more seriously when it treats men as central to the story. Look how much ink is spilled about that traitorous fuck Zuck as opposed to Carly Fiorina, another evil person seen from a labor perspective. It's also the book's enemy, time (ironically enough) that's proving sic transit gloria mundi for the models its characters are based on.

I'm hoping more of y'all will pick up on the story's commentary on fame and see how deeply relevant Powell's observations are for our own time.