3.5 rounded up to 4
"I think it’s exciting to see someone beautiful. […] Who’s to say you need more than that?” (p.228)

This was definitely a 'don't judge a book by its cover' situation. The cover image and tagline especially would typically put me off and I'd assume 'Ego' was a tawdry Harlequin-style romance (not that there's anything wrong with a good old-fashioned bodice ripper), but it is not.

In fact, it's a novel that I think would do much better now than when it was published in the early '90s. What with 80s and 90s nostalgia at fever pitch and the backdrop of the novel being the glitzy, sleazy age of the supermodel, 'Ego' would not be out of place if released as a Netflix original series (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

If you have any interest at all in the behind the scenes of the modeling industry, you'd really, really get a kick out of 'Ego' because you not only get to peek behind fashion magazine images and billboard ads, you also get a surprisingly complex and (correctly) cynical corporate intrigue plot.

Our protagonist, Miles, gets plucked out of obscurity working as a secret shopper at a high-end department store by the owner who happened to see him working at some point. The owner, Weissmann, is planning on launching a cologne called 'Eden' and he wants to take advantage of the popularity of supermodels to create an ad that will get everyone talking. This is the 90s, so you've got your Cindy Crawfords, your Naomi Campbells, your Linda Evangelistas. But no big-name male models. Weissmann wants to change that, so he hires Miles to travel to several modelling hubs around the world to search out 6 amateur male models so he can be responsible for 'creating' the world's first male supermodel, the 'Adam' for his 'Eden.'

Miles is delighted to have the opportunity for such sudden upward mobility dropped in his lap and gleefully sets out despite knowing nothing about modeling and with only the barest notion of what type of man he's even looking for.

Given that 'Ego' was published in the early '90s, I was incredibly surprised by how progressive Tim Geary's point of view was on the subject of the fashion industry. The casual racism and homophobia of many of the people the protagonist works with is worked in very mindfully to develop a sense of how common such attitudes were at the time (and sadly still are) and framed in such a way as to show how dehumanizing that is. For instance, one of the plot points involves the inclusion of a Black model in the competition and everyone in management positions at this company refer to him as just that: 'the Black model', an optics gimmick, a nod to how forward thinking the company is. But none of them take him seriously as a competitor; to them he's just a prop. Even to Miles himself, who puts this model forward, he's just a chess piece to secure his own position at the company.

But then we actually meet 'the Black model', Reuben, and he has a fairly substantiated personality: we visit his apartment, we meet his girlfriend, we hear him talk about his work on local community gardens; he becomes a real person to the reader, and so then when we cut back to Weissmann or Kristina or even protagonist Miles moving him around the figurative chess board of their own personal agendas, it feels wrong.

This is a tactic that Geary employs throughout the narrative. Sometimes it's a little bit on the nose and he'll have characters push back directly against various types of prejudice in the dialogue, but mostly he just lets it unfold (much as it likely did when he himself was a working model) while more subtly pushing back against it. For instance, there's a plotline where Miles is instructed to find a young homeless woman as an accessory for the main photoshoot since 'heroin chic' is all the rage in the industry, but that if he can't find someone authentic that looks good enough he should just hire a model who could 'pass' as a homeless person. Miles feels a bit weird about the assignment, but ultimately does as he's told.

Geary's real background in modelling really helps him build much of the backbone of the plot; you can tell by the level of detail how well he understands the industry he's writing about and is therefore in a position to critique accurately.

Pretty much everyone we meet is stunningly attractive, and we do spend time just watching beautiful people lolling around feeling their oats. But we're also let in on just how hollow and shallow the modelling industry forces their lives to be. One of the models has a panic attack when he gets a pimple on his nose the day before a photoshoot and as a result he starts sweating on set and is chastised for how inconvenient this is for the production team -- chastised for just being a real human with real human skin and sweat glands. An underage model is preyed on by a manager from one of the modelling agencies while Miles is scouting in Tokyo, and she talks about how she's used to 'dating' men much older than she is. During their interactions it's clear she already has issues with drugs and alcohol even though she's only 15.

And then there are the models who seem fairly well-adjusted, but we can see how most of them live pay-check to paycheck because of how unstable modelling work can be, and how many people just go, go, go until they run out of money or age out of the industry. Miles falls prey to the allure while travelling around, swept up in the Potemkin veneer while hanging out with models who are the exception; the 'I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000' types. However, even he seems to realize right at the very end that the incredibly unlikely chance of getting to be one of the handful living like that isn't worth staring down the reality of scrounging for poorly-paid one-off jobs.

I will say that given the length of the novel and the fact that Miles is our POV character for at least 90% of it, you do have to be on board with him being kind of a jerk. And by 'kind of a jerk' I mean a total ass. He's incredibly self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, and never lets a prick of conscience spoil a good time. His character journey is less "power corrupts" and more "power reveals" (a twist on the famous power corrupts quote by Lyndon B. Johnson biographer Robert Caro). His newfound power doesn't make him a bad person; it reveals that he already was.

I personally like characters like this when constructed by self-aware authors, and Tim Geary definitely knew what he was doing. This is a tale that allows luck and logic rather than an internal moral compass pass judgement on each character. Who rises to the top and who goes down in flames in the end (and along the way) doesn't depend on how good they are, it depends on a combination of luck, privilege, and how useful they are to someone more powerful.

There's also a strong anti-capitalism undercurrent to the whole thing, and boy is the modeling industry the perfect industry to use as a vessel for how malevolent capitalism-enabled consumerism is. *chef's kiss*

Give it a shot; it really did deserve better.