2 Middle-Aged Couples, a Hot-Air Balloon Crash and Many Bad Decisions

New York Times

15-03-2025

Marcy Dermansky's new novel, 'Hot Air,' begins with a hot-air balloon falling out of the sky and into a suburban swimming pool. The tech billionaire piloting the balloon, Jonathan Foster, is dumped out of the basket head first, and a bystander — our unlucky protagonist, Joanie, who is in the middle of a first date — dives in to save him. The billionaire's wife, Julia, alights to dry land safely, aided by Joanie's date, Johnny.
To recap: The four main characters are named Joanie, Johnny, Jonathan and Julia, for reasons I could not discern. These names, and the novel's pared-down, childlike prose, give the book, Dermansky's sixth, the feel of a nursery rhyme, despite some of the adult subject matter (notably, swinging).
After Joanie determines that the tuxedoed billionaire does not need CPR, she realizes that she recognizes him: 'from the news, yes, but also from sleep-away camp, a long time ago.' He was her first kiss, it turns out, and (unlike her first kiss with Johnny, which has been interrupted by the balloon's arrival) 'it had been a good kiss, even — Joanie had felt her skin tingle.' But afterward he'd cruelly ignored her for the rest of the summer, then disappeared from her life.
If the multiple coincidences of this opening set up expectations for an antic, high-energy comic novel, readers will be surprised to find that what follows is mostly interior and meandering. The inverted structure is thrilling in concept — the climactic crash comes first, and the rest of the story is aftermath — but it can feel slack in execution, reading at times like protracted denouement.
Following their abrupt introduction, the two couples change into sweats, drink wine and sit around Johnny's pool discussing a partner swap. 'Do you remember,' Julia asks, 'back in the '70s, how our parents used to have key parties?' It's the tail end of the pandemic, and they are all relearning how to socialize, weighing what they want from life, romantically and professionally.
The close third-person narration alternates among these four characters, as well as Joanie's 8-year-old daughter, Lucy, and Jonathan's 20-something personal assistant, Vivian, whom the Fosters think of as 'their Vietnamese orphan.' But the novel's emotional core is the melancholic Joanie, a failed writer with a 'not-that-fancy apartment' and a couch mended with duct tape: 'She had published a novel, but that was years ago; the advance was spent, the royalty checks smaller each time.'
While the adults decide whom to sleep with, Lucy longs to go to Harry Potter Land and Vivian considers leaving her claustrophobic life in the Fosters' guesthouse. When careful, put-upon Joanie makes a bad decision at last — 'the stupidest but also the most exciting thing she had done in a long time' — it results in the most interesting scene in the novel.
Dermansky's books have an appealing unpredictability. Her most recent novel, 'Hurricane Girl' (2022), follows a woman who has escaped an abusive boyfriend only to have her house blown down in a hurricane. Later, a cameraman for a local news station bashes her over the head with a vase, giving her a traumatic brain injury. As in 'Hot Air,' the plot bucks narrative convention and leans on the absurdities of repeated names and implausible coincidences. 'Hurricane Girl' succeeds by juxtaposing the childlike surface with violence and real consequences.
By contrast, the stakes of 'Hot Air' feel low: Will Julia, a famous philanthropist who is unable to have children of her own, take Lucy to Harry Potter Land? Will Vivian quit her job to get an M.F.A.? Jonathan's plan to have her instead take private writing lessons from Joanie fizzles when Vivian refuses: 'This is not like learning the piano. I told you already, I'm applying to graduate school.' Even the problem of the balloon in the swimming pool, which you have to figure is a worst-case scenario for a pool owner, is dispensed with frictionlessly.
Who cares about plot or stakes if the book is funny enough, stylish enough, subversive enough? 'Hot Air' has plenty of quirky style and humor. Dermansky lands some funny jabs, especially at Harry Potter. In one section, Julia refers to the Rainforest Cafe as a 'contemporary version of hell, comparable to Hogwarts.'
But the book's revelations hew closely to what is already well known: that billionaires are awful, that theme parks are hot and loud, that raising children is more difficult than it might appear. The prosaic language is sometimes funny but sometimes trite. A character 'turned beet red' in embarrassment. Narrating the balloon crash, Joanie notes with curious flatness: 'It was crazy.' Inwardly admiring his assistant, Jonathan observes, 'She had that pretty, pretty shiny silky hair.'
'Hot Air' is a novel of sex, class and envy. Juicy topics to be sure, but it's all a little deflated.