Dear Monica Lewinsky: A Novel
Julia Langbein
Apr 2026 · Doubleday
Ebook
320
Pages
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infoThis book will become available on April 14, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
From the acclaimed author of American Mermaid (“I loved it…and have never read anything like it”—Elizabeth Gilbert) comes a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites—starring an apparition of Monica Lewinsky
Forty-five-year old Jean Dornan cannot escape the shadow of something she did several decades ago. On a study abroad program to France in the summer of 1998, she embarked on a deeply inappropriate relationship with her professor. When the professor contacts her out of the blue to invite her to his retirement ceremony, she is jolted out of her malaise and filled with the need to understand why the affair derailed her life.
Rereading her old diaries, she is shocked to realize her relationship with the professor occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, she finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky—as if she were some kind of secular saint, the patron of persecuted and demonized women, perhaps?—and begging Monica’s forgiveness for not understanding everything they had in common. To her shock, Saint Monica appears to her—like a saucy Ghost of Christmas Past—and leads her back in time to reassess what happened. Had Jean merely been weak, stupid, blind, as she has told herself for years? What was it about her that led her into the affair? What did she really do that summer?
Told in flashbacks of those sun-lit six weeks that changed Jean's life, interspersed with irreverent accounts of real female martyrs and visitations from Saint Monica offering insight about Jean’s younger self, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and thought-provoking examination of desire and how it shapes us. It is also a timely examination of what grace and forgiveness look like, in our lives and throughout history.
Forty-five-year old Jean Dornan cannot escape the shadow of something she did several decades ago. On a study abroad program to France in the summer of 1998, she embarked on a deeply inappropriate relationship with her professor. When the professor contacts her out of the blue to invite her to his retirement ceremony, she is jolted out of her malaise and filled with the need to understand why the affair derailed her life.
Rereading her old diaries, she is shocked to realize her relationship with the professor occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, she finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky—as if she were some kind of secular saint, the patron of persecuted and demonized women, perhaps?—and begging Monica’s forgiveness for not understanding everything they had in common. To her shock, Saint Monica appears to her—like a saucy Ghost of Christmas Past—and leads her back in time to reassess what happened. Had Jean merely been weak, stupid, blind, as she has told herself for years? What was it about her that led her into the affair? What did she really do that summer?
Told in flashbacks of those sun-lit six weeks that changed Jean's life, interspersed with irreverent accounts of real female martyrs and visitations from Saint Monica offering insight about Jean’s younger self, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and thought-provoking examination of desire and how it shapes us. It is also a timely examination of what grace and forgiveness look like, in our lives and throughout history.
About the author
Julia Langbein, a sketch and standup comedian for many years, holds a doctorate in Art History and is the author of American Mermaid as well as a non-fiction book about comic art criticism. She has written about food, art and travel for Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Eater, Salon, Frieze and other publications, receiving a James Beard award for her essay “Market Volatility.” A native of Chicago, she lives outside of Paris with her family.
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