Title: The Amateur
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Publication date: August 4, 2026
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant: When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddy with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men, and a teenager on trial.
1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives.
In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy’s little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, The Amateur asks: What happens when one small moment—a swing, a ball, a piece of string—changes the course of an entire life?
In prolific author Chris Bohjalian’s newest novel — his 26th! — the focus in on what seems to be a random accident. One August day in 1978, talented golfer Mira Winston, soon to depart for her freshman year at Yale, hits a golf ball at the practice net, as she does hundreds of time every week. But this time, the ball goes through the net and slams into the skull of a caddy — Kenny Foster, Mira’s high school classmate — killing him instantly.
The Amateur unfolds as Mira tells her story from a distance of decades. As we learn, Mira has become a successful author and is now writing her memoir, looking back on this turning point in her teens and revealing the secrets and traumas that have shaped her into the person she is today. And what secrets she has to tell!
Known — unfairly — for her temper, Mira is a golf prodigy who is so good that she routinely plays with the adult men at her country club, the only way she’s actually challenged. Is having a teen girl spend that much time with middle aged, highly privileged men good for her? It may help her golf game, but as we learn, it brings Mira into the orbit of predatory men who see her as fair game. At age 15, Mira begins an affair with a man thirty years her senior… and as Mira reminds us, her impulsive, needy teen brain doesn’t quite grasp that he’s a predator, not a lover.
Within her suburban Westchester home, Mira’s older brother is nicknamed “the Pinnacle” by her parents. She’ll never live up to him, that’s for sure… and meanwhile, Mira makes sure to water down her parents’ liquor bottles so their three or four nightly cocktails won’t be quite as potent as they could be. Mira has friends and does well at school, but she’s clearly a girl who lacks emotional support as well as any sort of internal or external restraint.
The golf accident leads to a chain of events that completely derails Mira’s life. She immediately swears off golf and Yale, and her warped sense of internal logic (something she refers to as Mira Land) leads her to believe that her killing of Kenny is karmic payback for her affair with Theo Catton. When the affair is revealed and then a dispute with the country club golf pro comes to light, questions arise about just what Mira might or might not have done. And while at first her lawyer father assures her that she has nothing to worry about from a legal standpoint, that proves to be untrue. A civil case against the club and the net manufacturer leads to a criminal case against Mira herself. And while Mira, narrating the story, makes it clear that she didn’t do the things she’s accused of, we can easily see how the circumstances — and the sexist prejudices of the time — make her history and her supposed sins support the charges against her.
It’s both fascinating and disturbing to spend time inside Mira’s head for the duration of this story. As adult Mira recounts these pivotal events from her earlier life, it’s clear that she has spent decades coming to terms with what happened and the guilt and trauma she’s carried with her ever since. A post from the author describes Mira as his id and Kenny as his superego, and the idea of Mira as pure id really rings true. She’s impulsive, intelligent but not always smart, and give in to destructive urges for escape, release, or relief, even when she must know that her choices aren’t helping her.
At the same time, the community and era in which Mira lives set her up, again and again, for the worst possible outcomes. Yes, she’s the daughter of a wealthy family with a country club membership — and the elitism inherent in this works against her in the trial scenes, where jury sympathy naturally flows toward the club’s employees rather than the members who complain or demand. But also, she’s just barely an adult, and was in fact a minor when she was seduced by Theo. She remembers being a willing participant — but she was a young girl preyed upon by a much older man, and not of age or in any way truly capable of consent. And yet, in the eyes of the community, and even people she meets later who hear rumors, she’s the person responsible for breaking up a marriage and ruining the lives of the children whose parents divorced. The degree of blame and scorn leveled at Mira is awful, but sadly not terribly shocking, especially in the context of the late 1970s.
I did wonder about the court case and whether the charges against Mira could or would actually have come to trial, much less whether someone in this situation would have ever been criminally charged in the first place. Of course, I have no legal expertise and it’s entirely possible that this is realistic — but I did often find myself saying “really???” while seeing how the legal and criminal aspects developed throughout the book.
The Amateur is fast-paced and absorbing. Mira is a unique character, and her take on events from her past as well as her recounting of her life at the point in which she’s writing her memoir never follows an easy or expected path. It’s amusing to note that Mira’s bestselling novels include books about a flight attendant and a midwife, and to see conversational references to a sleepwalker and a lioness. (IYKYK… but check out the list of Chris Bohjalian books!)
Chris Bohjalian’s books are must-reads for me, and while I still need to get to some of his earliest novels, I don’t think I’ve missed a new release of his in the past 15 years. In terms of personal preferences, I do love his books with historical settings (such as The Jackal’s Mistress, The Lioness, and Hour of the Witch) more than his more contemporary or thriller-focused books… but that’s only by comparison — I’ve never not enjoyed any of this author’s books.
I raced through The Amateur and found it a compelling, thought-provoking read. Mira’s voice is a stand-out! Beyond the hard-driving plot, there’s plenty here to stop and ponder, and I can see this book making a terrific book group pick. Highly recommended.
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