i DID NOT expect this to be as good as it turned out to be. from a simple, if slightly peculiar premise of a woman going into a pool and not coming out, a massive story opening the lives of the characters better than many 300-500page novels is expanded on and fulfilled in a 150-page book. 5stars

This novella takes place during a single day, 11/3/1957, the day Sputnik 2 launched with dog Laika inside, and tells the story of the marriage of Virgil and Kathleen Beckett. As Virgil takes their children to church, Kathleen decides to take advantage of the warm November day and enjoy the pool in their apartment complex. Only she refuses to get out once her husband and children return. As she sits in the pool, we learn about the events that led up to this point in the marriage and to the breaking point they face.

Anthony has written a intriguing character study focusing on the mid-century marriage. Kathleen feels stifled in her role as mother and Virgil is stuck in his role as a mediocre (if that) insurance salesman, a role he never really wanted to begin with but felt he needed to provide for his family. I enjoyed how the story kept adding complications to their situation as it went along but left the ending open for the reader.

Rating:4.25 rounded down

"The Most" by author, Jessica Anthony, is a compact novel. While it would be wildly wrong to call this a horror, Anthony writes a terrifying tale of what happens to love mixed with complacency.

It's the 1950's and husband and wife, Virgil and Kathleen are a typical family from the outside-- two healthy boys, a marriage of nine years, a new car, church-goers. But nothing is what it seems. The story takes place over a short time span, yet readers get to experience the entire lives of the married couple. Kathleen decided to take a dip in the pool and refuses to get out, Virgil tries his best to coax her out, but nothing seems to work until one moment, when everything comes to a peak.

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I absolutely loved "The Most". It's short. You can read it in one sitting, and it delivers. I typically don't like stories of affairs but Anthony layers so many human emotions within her characters. It's a must read and it's for sure a book to get anybody out of a reading slump.

Thank you author, Jessica Anthony, publisher Little Brown and Company, and Netgalley for bringing this title to us.

This was short and speedy read. I have been watching Mad Men on Netflix recently, so this mid-century short story about a bored and lonely housewife and her philandering business husband was very on theme.

Alternating between Kathleen and Virgil’s perspectives, back and forth through time, the story is character-driven as we learn about the complexities and secrets of our husband and wife duo and how their life together has unfolded. I usually like this kind of story but the plot of “The Most” was only ok. I had a trouble getting invested in the characters, and there wasn’t any emotional payoff at the end to bring the unlikable MCs to some new place. Well written with excellent time/place description, but a little disappointing overall.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC!

a little snapshot of this married couple in the 1950's swapping perspectives to explore how unlikeable they are and awful for each other. I really expected more weird and more scandals from this. Also, whoever called this "thrilling" needs to go outside and talk to a singular human being because where

1950s Housewife’s Marital Discontent

The Most by Jessica Anthony is a tightly wound novella set in the 1950s, revolving around a single day in the life of Kathleen and Virgil, a married couple facing a moment of crisis. On an unusually warm Sunday, Kathleen decides to skip church and instead spends the day in the swimming pool of their apartment complex, refusing to come out. This decision sets the stage for a day of introspection and confrontation, both for Kathleen and Virgil, as they grapple with their individual and shared discontents.

Jessica Anthony's The Most is a compelling and intense novella that offers a darkly comic look at marital discontent and societal expectations in the 1950s. Its vivid writing and complex characters make it a memorable read, despite some minor shortcomings in character development. For readers looking for a quick yet impactful read, The Most is highly recommended.

I don’t know if it’s the Gen-X in me, but I find stories about women doing nothing incredibly compelling: the act of deciding to do nothing is not just apathy, but is, in and of itself, a decision–an action–to take no action. This going all the way back to Aimee Bender‘s 2003 A Dive From Clausen‘s Pier, where the character is torn about admitting to admit that she was going to break off the engagement to her fiancé as he lies in a coma after a diving accident; to Rowan Beaird’s The Divorcees, about women in a special residential hotel in Reno waiting for their divorces to be finalized; to more recently, Alison Espach’s very compelling The Wedding People, about a woman waiting out her weekend in a luxury resort with intent to kill herself at the end of her five-star stay. The Most is about a housewife and mother who skips church, goes for a swim, and simply decides to refuse to come out of her apartment complex’s swimming pool one fall afternoon.

Set in 1957 and centered around the dissatisfaction of mid-century middle class America, this brief story captures the relationship of Kathleen and her husband to one another and their two sons. The narrative moves back-and-forth between Virgil and Kathleen, and is a model of differentiation, with each spouse having their own secrets, sorrows, wants and needs, and it is an unflinching unravelling of what’s behind a marriage.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #TheMost via #NetGalley courtesy of Little, Brown and Company.

Despite a poorly-timed gothic turn near the end, this is a clever postwar suburban malaise melodrama which stands apart due to the truly unique strangeness of its serially untruthful married protagonists.

this book is uniquely confusing — not because it's about a woman refusing to get out of a pool (normal, relatable), but because there were so many inconsistencies. i had trouble telling what was going on.

One of the best books I have read this year! It was incredible feat by the author to get so much information, and so much feeling!!!, into less than 150 pages. I will recommend this book to everyone I know.

This reads like a novel written in the time when it was set, the late 1950's, when the world felt so different but yet so much the same. I don't know how Jessica Anthony did it but I am so very glad that she did!

In Jessica Anthony's The Most, we follow Kathleen, a 1950's housewife who, one day, refuses to get out of her apartment complex's pool. We follow Kathleen and her husband over the course of this day, as we delve deeper into her psyche, life, and relationships.

While I was intrigued by this book's premise and setting, I never felt like I was able to connect with the characters in any meaningful way. While this book had interesting themes, I think the story and characterization felt too thin for me to ever feel truly engaged. Still, this book may be of interest to people who are interested in mid=century gender dynamics.

A really short read that unspools the story of a marriage over one day when a 1950s housewife refuses to leave her apartment complex's pool.

Kathleen, a former tennis star is not living the life she imagines. Virgil, her insurance salesman husband, is just as disillusioned. And they have both been harbouring life-shattering secrets from each other. Over the course of 8 hours we get glimpses of both people, their choices and dreams, and the mistakes they've made, ultimately unsure of what might happen next.

The atmosphere in this is just pitch-perfect. It feels very of the time and I really love how your assumptions and judgements about this couple change and evolve over the course of the novel. Nothing is quite as it seems.

It's probably good that it's a short punch of a novel because I'm not quite sure it could have been sustained much longer, it's a bit of a wide lens on the whole situation, without really delving too deep, but that really worked here for me.

THE MOST opens on a warm November day. It's nine years into Kathleen and Virgil's marriage, and they're at a crossroads. Through alternating chapters, we discover the secrets they've kept. Kathy wiles away the day in the pool as her husband grows increasingly agitated by her detached behavior.

The title comes from what Kathy's Czech tennis instructor framed as a powerful tennis play that must be seldom used; a "bridge" that leads to certain success, if sparingly employed. The setup is clearly signaled towards the end, but that doesn't lessen the enjoyment of seeing it play out.

Reminiscent of Claire Keegan, Jessica Anthony crafts a well executed story in this stim yet powerful novel.

(Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.)

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

This book follows a housewife that one day just decides to get in the pool and refuses to get out.

I thought this book was just ok. I don't think it packed the full punch that I was looking for. It was not bad though and the writing was good. I just wish it went a bit deeper and explored the characters a bit more.

This one is not bad but not my favorite.

The Most was an excellent read. The audiobook was well narrated and I listened as I read along. I really liked the reflection on marriage and norms in the 1950s, and the protagonist pushing against those.

What an odd, compelling, interesting little book. Set in 1957 during one day in the life of Kate and Virgil, the short novel reads like a Cheever story with a twist. Subtle and secretive, this moment in time has a kick to it. A lot is revealed in this novel's brief pages.

This is a book that people are either going to love or hate, thankfully I loved it. It's a slim novel, at just 133 pages, but boy does it pack a punch. Told in alternating perspectives from a husband and wife in the 1950s, it explores the marriage on the brink of either destruction or redemption. The full story of their lives and relationship is slowly revealed, and Anthony's extremely skilled at this. These bits of information, both big and small, highlight how little the couple truly understands each other. This would be a great book club pick because there's lots to discuss and one that will bring out many differing opinions.

A book you can read on the beach in one afternoon! Jessica Anthony’s main characters Virgil and Kathleen are deceiving and hiding secrets from each other and neither will give in to admit their faults - even though they both know they’re wrong.

Based on the blurb of a 1950's housewife taking a morning dip into the pool and then refusing to leave, I expected this to be more of a women's rights story. But the story is more of a glimpse into the seemingly, at the time, insignificant choices we make that ultimately lead to bigger consequences. The author managed to pack quite a bit of backstory in very few pages. Virgil and Kathleen Beckett have made a mess of their marriage without each other realizing it. Kathleen decides today will be the day to hash it all out and sausage fingers be damned, will not leave the pool until all secrets have been revealed.

In 1957, on an unseasonably warm November Sunday, Kathleen Beckett (sometimes Kathy, occasionally Katie), doesn’t feel quite right. She informs her husband Virgil that she will not be accompanying him and the children, Nicholas and Nathaniel, to church. After moving the family to Newark, Delaware for a new job a little more than 6 months prior, Virgil insisted that the family begin attending services and since then none of them had missed a single one, so he wonders if his wife is alright. She insists it’s nothing to worry over though and sends them on their way.

At church, Virgil gets excited about meeting his coworkers at the country club for golf, paying little attention to the sermon. Meanwhile, Kathy goes about taking care of some minor housework until she looks out from the balcony of their apartment and sees that the complex’s pool is open to use. On a whim, she digs out a bathing suit she hasn’t worn since her college days when she was a star tennis player, puts it on, and walks into the water.

When Virgil arrives home, he is surprised to find that Kathy isn’t in the apartment. He is even more surprised when one of the children proclaims that they can see her in the pool. He hurries outside to see if she is doing alright and then to find out why she decided to go swimming, only for her to remark that she is fine and she felt like taking a dip. Weirdly flustered by this, Virgil asks her to come out so she can watch the children, allowing him to make his tee time. She tells him the kids will be fine and that he should just go to the club, so he does, and she remains in the pool.

What follows is an examination of the myriad things, both big and little, that happen over the years to cause a seemingly happy marriage to go cold. Alternating perspectives from one chapter to the next we learn how the couple met, what their dreams are (or were), how they found themselves moving to their new apartment, and the secrets they’ve hidden from each other that are now threatening to burst forth from the depths and out into the light.

It’s amazing just how much detail Jessica Anthony is able to pack into this slim book. At 144 pages it’s easily readable in a single sitting, and using beautifully spare language to imagine a pair of fully realized characters Anthony makes it hard not to do so. The repression forced on people in that era, along with the unequal standards imposed on men and women have led our couple to make some poor decisions, often for heartbreaking reasons. The novella ends on an ambiguous note, simultaneously hopeful and trepidatious, leaving us to ponder over Katie and Virgil’s fates, and I can’t think of a more perfect place to have left us.