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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Face-Time is set at an unspecified date in the early 21st century, when the sex scandals rocking the presidency of Bill Clinton have faded into history--but the Washington, D.C., in which it takes place isn't too much different from that of 1998. Ben Krause is a thirtysomething speechwriter for charismatic president Charles Sheffield. His girlfriend, Gretchen, works in the White House travel office--and when President Sheffield catches sight of her at a party, he quickly executes his droit de seigneur. When he finally puts the pieces together, Ben is naturally less than thrilled... especially when Gretchen reports that she doesn't want to break up with him and she doesn't intend to stop servicing the chief executive.
Face-Time is set at an unspecified date in the early 21st century, when the sex scandals rocking the presidency of Bill Clinton have faded into history--but the Washington, D.C., in which it takes place isn't too much different from that of 1998. Ben Krause is a thirtysomething speechwriter for charismatic president Charles Sheffield. His girlfriend, Gretchen, works in the White House travel office--and when President Sheffield catches sight of her at a party, he quickly executes his droit de seigneur. When he finally puts the pieces together, Ben is naturally less than thrilled... especially when Gretchen reports that she doesn't want to break up with him and she doesn't intend to stop servicing the chief executive.
First-time novelist Erik Tarloff--the husband of former Clinton advisor Laura Tyson and an occasional contributor to Clinton's speeches--has a firm sense of plot development, although at times the narration comes across as overerudite, as Ben casually drops allusions to Desmond Morris, the madwoman of Chaillot, Casablanca, and other topics that make the young protagonist seem about a decade or so older. But this is a minor quibble that does nothing to detract from the book's perfect suitability for a weekend's entertainment.
From Publishers Weekly
Political speechwriter Ben Krause discovers his girlfriend has better access to his boss?the president of the U.S.?than Ben does. The question, in Beltway insider Tarloff's timely first novel, is whether the affair really bothers him. Ben and curvaceous, plainspoken Gretchen Burns, who works in the White House Office of Social Affairs, make an ambitious young Washington couple who don't have to be told twice about the value of "face-time" or direct access to the president. They receive all the right invitations, including private film screenings with the president and first lady and their coterie of friends. There, Gretchen catches the commander in chief's eye and soon Ben is being sent out of town on unlikely peace missions. A wry, self-deprecating and appealing narrator given to gee-whiz expressions ("I know it sounds dopey and sappy"), Ben struggles with the issue of sharing his girlfriend with a man who, on one hand, is the leader of the free world, yet, on the other, represents a humiliating insult to his manhood. Gretchen, in contrast, remains the not terribly bright opportunist observers have come to recognize from presidential scandals, notwithstanding Tarloff's attempt to portray her sympathetically. The husband of Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who served on the Council of Economic Advisers for President Clinton, and a speechwriter himself, Tarloff has penned a book that is more a benign meditation on the effects of being cuckolded than a pointed political send-up, although his acute observations aptly illustrate how absolute power can corrupt absolutely. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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