MUTUAL INTEREST
A classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.
At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents’ dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants—not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
But Vivian’s plans require capital,
A classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.
At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents’ dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants—not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
But Vivian’s plans require capital, so the two pair up with Squire Clancey, scion of an old American fortune. Together they found Clancey & Schmidt, a preeminent manufacturer of soap, perfume, and candles. When Oscar and Squire fall in love, the trio form a new kind of partnership.
Vivian reaches the pinnacle of her power building Clancey & Schmidt into an empire of personal care products while operating behind the image of both men. But exposure threatens, and all three partners are made aware of how much they have to lose.
For readers of Hernan Diaz’s Trust and Colm Tóibín’s The Magician, with echoes of Gustave Flaubert and E.M. Forster, Mutual Interest is a beguiling story of queer romance, empire, and power.
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Hardcover
- February 2025
- 336 Pages
- 9781639733323
Buy the Book
$28.99
About Olivia Wolfgang-Smith Wolfgang-Smith
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith is the author of Glassworks, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and lives in Brooklyn with her partner.
Praise
“A timeless queer love story and a meditation on power, capitalism, and the flow of history . . . This novel is a revelation and a joy.” —Anna North, New York Times bestselling author of Outlawed
“Wolfgang-Smith explores tensions in the private lives of three queer misfits turned business titans in her stunning latest . . . Wolfgang-Smith’s sharp, sardonic narration brilliantly brings to life both the Gilded Age and her unforgettable protagonists. It’s a virtuosic performance.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Olivia Wolfgang-Smith writes with gusto, confidence and humor, and it’s a magical combination.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward
“Hernan Diaz’s Trust but make it gay? Narrated in the sly-eyed style of Plain Bad Heroines? I am absolutely buying what this book is selling, an epic and intimate tale of three secretly queer aspiring business titans who band together—and in the case of two of them, marry—to build an empire.” —Electric Lit, Most Anticipated Queer Books for Spring 2025
“Wolfgang-Smith is nothing short of virtuosic in her wry and witty world-building . . . This is a novel of families won and lost, love, envy, and betrayal told in a remarkably fresh and entertaining way, with immersive period detail and compelling emotional stakes. Mutual Interestis essential reading.” —Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
- Discuss the novel’s three epigraphs with your book club. How do you think each applies to the story within? How do they frame your expectations?
- The novel begins with a description of 1816 as “The Year Without a Summer,” and Mount Tambora’s eruption. These references also appear throughout the novel. Why do you think the author chose to preface the novel this way? In what ways does “The Year Without a Summer” relate to the themes of the novel? How does Mount Tambora’s eruption serve as a metaphor for its events?
- “He had too much money to continue living the life he knew, but not enough—or not the right kind—to dissolve into the upper echelon of society” (30). Discuss how class is portrayed in the novel. What complications does it present? In what ways do the characters abide—or not abide—by the standards of their society?
- “Both parties were performing roles they had seen onstage and read about in novels but never truly understood. Still, the relief, the joy, the hope after long uncertainty for a happier, more stable tomorrow—these emotions were real enough on both sides, if only indirectly related to the matter at hand” (73). Discuss how gender roles appear in the novel. How do characters perform them—and how do they subvert them?
- “At least they had a mutual interest in letting the memory fade. It was one of many mutual interests, all of them principally controlled by Vivian” (91). Discuss this quote. Which interests of the three main characters do you think were truly mutual?
- “Sex was, on this matter, an equalizer, more powerful even than social class” (99). Discuss this quote. How does sex function in the novel, as an equalizer or otherwise?
- “Vivian made the rigid shape of the world malleable by simply confusing the right people at the right moment” (111–12). Discuss this quote in relation to Vivian—do you agree? Do you find her resourceful—or Machiavellian? Discuss.
- “One’s origins, Vivian thought, were inescapable. Inevitable, destined. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust” (121). How do Vivian, Oscar, and Squire’s backgrounds make them who they are? In what ways do they each rebel against from where they came—and in what ways do they carry it with them?
- The novel employs an “intrusive narrator,” a style popular in the era in which the novel is set. How does this omniscient style of narration influence the way we read the novel?
- “A capitalist fairy tale, Vivian in a walnut-paneled office with a rolltop desk” (135). In what ways might the novel resemble a fairy tale—of capitalism or otherwise?
- “Even in America, a country that has been obliged to manufacture a mold-cast imitation of a sceptered class, there exists a species of person best able—perhaps only able—to process strong emotion behind a placid facade” (144). What kind of portrait of historic America does the novel paint? Of New York?
- “Squire and Vivian were partners too—appreciative of each other’s brilliance; frustrated by each other’s flaws; accustomed to their many shared routines” (187). Consider this definition of partnership. What other ways is it defined by the novel?
- “With Sofia, [Vivian] would have remained an audience, a good luck charm. A hanger-on. Perpetually uneasy, dependent not just on her own charms but on another person’s capricious taste for them” (194). Why do you think Vivian is so drawn to Sofia? Consider the ways their relationship is different from Vivian’s relationship with Oscar and Squire.
- “Who among us has not soldiered on through festivities honoring, or critiques berating, an identity that no longer applies? Who among us has not weathered a prodigal holiday return to a place once familiar, now made ancient and strange by personal growth, and felt the vertiginous, regressive pull of outdated expectations?” (242). Consider this quote from the novel. Do you agree? Discuss with your book club.
- “Oscar had been for fifty-four years afraid of disaster in general, and for ten of those afraid of losing Squire in particular” (268). If such is true for Oscar, what do you think Squire and Vivian fear the most?
- What is your theory on where Vivian went—and how she transformed?