‘Mutual Interest’ by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith    (2025) – 317 pages

I read ‘Mutual Interest’ with a smile on my face the entire time. Each sentence is witty and wonderful, delicious. I admire each one of Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s sentences; I know there is going to be something in each one to engage my mind.

In this lively novel, it is 1900 in New York City, and after a couple of short affairs with other young women, Vivian, 24, decides to get married to a man approaching 45 years old named Oscar. However her marriage plan is not the usual.

“…after listening to Oscar rattle on for half the evening, she was fairly confident in his queerness. (How heartbroken he would have been, to know how easily she saw his secret soul!) With such a man there would be, Vivian reasoned, no need to bother each other.”

Their marriage would turn out to be mutually beneficial. For Oscar,

“Gone were the monikers like “horticultural gent” and “Mr. Washed-Out”; silenced were the rumblings he was a queer and a failure and a hopeless hayseed. Everything was drowned out by the possibility of a romance,…”

Besides,

“How many men did he know who regularly visited their wives’ bedrooms? Were there any above the age of forty-five? Oscar had already reached the all-purpose excuse of middle age!”

Then there is another younger entrepreneur named Squire Clancy. Oscar sells soaps; Squire sells candles. Vivian decides the two businesses are compatible. Besides Vivian quickly detects that Squire is also gay.

There is broad physical humor when Vivian stealthily pushes Squire into the walrus pool at the aquarium, and there is more sophisticated humor when Vivian follows through with her plot to marry Oscar and to bring Squire in to keep all three of them content, safe, and financially secure.

Oscar is practical; Squire is creative. Together their business, Clancy & Schmidt, is successful. Meanwhile Vivian continues to have short flings with other women.

“Vivian had found a way to make marriage work for her; she had won a game, she thought, that these girls were terrified to play.”

The second part of ‘Mutual Interest’ transpires ten years later, still in New York City. World War I has begun, and the Panama Canal has opened. Due to the complementary skills of Oscar and Squire, and especially due to the organizing skills of Vivian, the business Clancy & Schmidt has become hugely successful. Squire has moved into Vivian’s and Oscar’s house and sleeps in Oscar’s now double bed, leaving Vivian the time and the freedom to hunt and find various short-term female lovers.

As I mentioned before, I loved the sentences in ‘Mutual Interest’. Can a sentence be delicious? I asked Google. Here is Google’s AI Overview:

“No, a sentence cannot literally be delicious. The word “delicious” is used to describe something that is pleasantly or favorably tasting or having a pleasing smell.”

Google AI apparently has not read ‘Mutual Interest’ by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith. ‘Mutual Interest’ is a novel of marvelous exquisite, yes delicious, sentences.

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith is a fiction writer whom I was fortunate to discover with her first novel ‘Glassworks’ which was my favorite read of 2023. ‘Mutual Interest’ is another winner.

Grade:    A