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Overview
Face-Time is the story of Ben and Gretchen, two young political activists who meet and fall in love while working on a presidential campaign. When their candidate wins, both are given jobs in the new administration, his as an increasingly prominent speechwriter and hers in the Office of Social Affairs. But then Ben finds out that Gretchen has been sleeping with his boss, the president, and he confronts her. Gretchen swears her love for Ben and vows to do anything to ensure their future happiness together ... except end the affair. She has gained the ultimate Washington prize: one-on-one "face-time" with the president. And, perhaps not coincidentally, Ben's stock as a speechwriter has never been higher. But is the professional success worth the personal price? Far more than an echo of recent headlines, this novel by Washington insider Erik Tarloff is an important work of politically inspired fiction that poses a culturally resonant question: In a society that venerates power and celebrity, how far are we willing to go to bring ourselves in proximity to them?Editorials
Michiko Kakutani
...[G]ains much of its heat frm its portrait of a President...who bears more than a passing resemblance to Bill Clinton....it has two very simple points to make: that the sex-and-power equation reigns supreme in Washington...and that powerful men like the President are apt to exercise...the assumption that they are entitled in ways that other mortals are not. —The New York TimesThomas Fields-Meyer
...[T]hought-provoking and entertaining...by turns psychodrama and meditation on the allure of power.—People Magazine
Washington Post
Excellent....Face Time turns this whole scandal question over on its head.From The Critics
While the plot isn't particularly engrossing, you keep reading with a sort of TV-talk-show-audience fascination with why the hell Krause stays with this woman who refuses to give up an affair.Library Journal
An Emmy-nominated TV writer who has done speeches for Bill, Hillary, and Al Gore dreams up the story of a White House aide whose girlfriend is having an affair with--you guessed it--the president.Los Angeles Times
A hilarious tale of high cuckoldry and misdemeanors in an oddly familiar White House.George Magazine
A spicy concoction, an alluring, below-the-Beltway morality tale.Jay Nordlinger
...[A] novel about adultery....Perfect for the Clinton era.— National Review
Patricia O'Brien
...Face-Time...rises to the level of a small morality play....Tarloff [does not] brand anyone a villain....he gives us a [comparison] between what people anxious for power really value and what they say they do....[It is] a story about sex and power in Washington that goes behind the headlines to a darker place.— The New York Times Book Review
The Washington Post
Excellent....Face Time turns this whole scandal question over on its head.Walter Shapiro
...Tarloff [has] some interesting insights about the sexual allure inherent in modern presidential power....Tarloff in Face-Time shrewdly understands that something has gone terribly wrong with our democracy, and that the moral failings of Bill Clinton are a symptom of this malady, not its cause.— The Washington Monthly
Kirkus Reviews
Today's intentional blurring of the line between fact and fiction continues with sometime speechwriter Tarloff's first novel, which asks the burning question: What if Monica Lewinsky had a live-in boyfriend who got wind of her affair and had hurt feelings and moral outrage of his own?Book Details
Published
January 1, 1999
Publisher
Crown Publications
Pages
249
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780609604632