Told over nine charged days, Sheer is the gripping tale of a controversial beauty mogul’s insatiable ambition and the slippery ground between empowerment and abuse of power.
It’s 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment.
From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look—cosmetics through a female gaze—all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max’s story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Who has she become in her relentless pursuit of success? And what will happen if she loses it all?
Genre: Literary Fiction
It’s 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment.
From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look—cosmetics through a female gaze—all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max’s story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Who has she become in her relentless pursuit of success? And what will happen if she loses it all?
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Sharp and propulsive, Sheer is a morally complex examination of the rise and fall of an innovative beauty founder who has been trained by society to hide her sexuality. At what cost will she hold onto her power? Who is the victim and who is the perpetrator? Through narrator Maxine's confessional tone, Lawrence crafts a compulsively readable story about ambition, beauty, power, and race." - Crystal Hana Kim
"In Sheer, Vanessa Lawrence gives us something we rarely get to see: a queer point of view on the beauty industry, and on female ambition therein. It's a complicated portrayal of power, desire, and how the two are intensified by an industry with no room for lesbianism, brought to life by a voicey narrator confessing it all. I couldn't read it fast enough." - Gabrielle Korn
"Vanessa Lawrence is a marvel. Biting, shocking, illuminating, and whip-smart, her sophomore novel, Sheer, exposes the brutality behind the beauty industry, as it gives us the confession of canceled makeup mogul Maxine Thomas. Maxine bares all, revealing the layered pressures of gender, sexuality, race, and class at play on a made-up face, all the while telling us a gorgeous and unforgettable story. Lawrence pulls it off perfectly: she shows the awful system behind the beautiful woman, then the woman at the heart of the system itself." - Julia Phillips
"In Sheer, Vanessa Lawrence gives us something we rarely get to see: a queer point of view on the beauty industry, and on female ambition therein. It's a complicated portrayal of power, desire, and how the two are intensified by an industry with no room for lesbianism, brought to life by a voicey narrator confessing it all. I couldn't read it fast enough." - Gabrielle Korn
"Vanessa Lawrence is a marvel. Biting, shocking, illuminating, and whip-smart, her sophomore novel, Sheer, exposes the brutality behind the beauty industry, as it gives us the confession of canceled makeup mogul Maxine Thomas. Maxine bares all, revealing the layered pressures of gender, sexuality, race, and class at play on a made-up face, all the while telling us a gorgeous and unforgettable story. Lawrence pulls it off perfectly: she shows the awful system behind the beautiful woman, then the woman at the heart of the system itself." - Julia Phillips
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