{"id":5379,"date":"2026-06-25T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=5379"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:10:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:10:48","slug":"the-amateur-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=5379","title":{"rendered":"The Amateur"},"content":{"rendered":"

There but for the grace of God go the rest of us feral \u201870s kids. Mira Winston stands out at her swanky suburban New York golf club as a teenager who can beat older women at the game and who seeks out men to play against so she can have some competition. If she\u2019s not the most sociable, she doesn\u2019t care; it\u2019s all about golf, which also provides an escape from her parent\u2019s drinking and indifference. She\u2019s off to Yale this fall, until during practice she hits a ball through the net and kills a caddy, a less-well-off boy her age whom she knew in passing at school. Everyone assures her it was a freak accident. Even her lawyer-father is sure the net manufacturer or the Talmadge club will be held liable, if anyone. But Mira\u2019s earlier bratty behavior and her attraction to much older men doesn\u2019t help her in the town\u2019s eyes, nor does an equipment problem that comes to light, and soon fingers are pointing. Bohjalian is as always a master of the inner voice, and in this faux-memoir by Mira, he drops readers into her turmoil as talent and languid privilege meet the real world. Readers will remember the did-she-or-didn\u2019t-she tension in Bohjalian\u2019s Midwives<\/em>, which is reflected here, but fans of all his books will eat this up; it\u2019s also great for readers of Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult.<\/strong>\u2014Henrietta Thornton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There but for the grace of God go the rest of us feral \u201870s kids. Mira Winston stands out at her swanky suburban New York golf club as a teenager…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[59,52,50,51],"class_list":["post-5379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-literary","tag-psychological","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Amat-400x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Amat.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}