ANGUS WENDELL, a disillusioned art history major working for a customs import company, wakes up in his Long Island co-op on the morning of September 5, 2014 to find a strange young nude woman asleep on his cream linen sofa. Upon waking, SYLVIA TIPTON has no idea where she is or how she got there. The last thing she remembers is a fire on the second floor of her Brooklyn residence that consumed her sick grandfather, Keene Tipton. The severity of Sylvia’s muddled state of mind becomes glaringly apparent when Angus learns she believes the year is 1943. Despite Sylvia’s alarming delusional state, she is very beautiful, so Angus decides to take her to his cousin Colton’s wedding the next day, if only to impress his aloof extended family with the pity-invite’s gorgeous date.
At the wedding, Sylvia meets Angus’s handicapped uncle, Robert Wendell, and his slick though dimwitted cousin, Kellan. Irritated with Kellan’s flirtations, Angus urges an early departure. Before leaving, Sylvia meets the quiet, phlegmatic Dale, brother-in-law of Troy Ruggieri, father of the groom, and Dale’s demented grandmother Annie, who yaps out a strange “hello” to Sylvia with a lingering stare.
The next day, Troy Ruggieri, Assistant to the Curator at the Aufero Museum, drops off a boxed museum piece at Angus’s apartment, hastily explaining it was an unavoidable “insurance claim issue.”
During a birthday celebration at Dale’s house, Annie suffers a harrowing memory of her ex-husband, Edward Aufero, and is escorted upstairs to her room. When Sylvia goes upstairs, she recognizes Annie’s music box and immediately realizes Annie is her own cousin, Fianna! On the way home, Sylvia reveals this to Angus, and that one of the other guests at the party, Mitchell Aufero, Curator of the Aufero Museum, is the son of Edward Aufero—Annie’s ex-husband and the probate lawyer of Sylvia’s grandfather!
Plagued by Kellan flirting with Sylvia, and still bitter over his former employment at the Aufero Museum as a lowly attendant, Angus, by way of distraction, decides to open up Troy’s museum box. Inside is a herm, an ancient Greek columnar sculpture consisting of a carved face and an erect phallus. Sylvia finds it utterly offensive and smacks the phallus off with the Bible Angus had purchased for her from his favorite local bookstore. When Troy comes to pick up the statue, he is strangely unconcerned with the repaired hairline fracture. Angus later notices a chunk of the statue on the floor, and saves it.
Sylvia visits Angus’s Uncle Robert and notices a King Arthur book her grandfather Keene had given to a little boy named Robert. It turns out Robert’s father, Pierce—also Angus’s great-grandfather—had a romantic liaison with a woman named Nadine before Nadine married Sylvia’s uncle, Jerel. Sylvia turns pale at Robert’s mention of both her grandfather and uncle, so Robert calls his nephew Kellan to take her home early.
On the way back to Angus’s apartment, Kellan convinces Sylvia to try marijuana, and she eventually succumbs to his charm. Angus later goes ballistic, promptly confronting Kellan in his home. Besides accusing Kellan of date raping Sylvia, Angus condemns the entire extended family for years of mistreatment and aloofness. An intoxicated Kellan babbles that he had nothing to do with the “family heirloom.” Kellan’s brother Ryder explains that their ancestor, Keene Tipton, had left clues in his will about a valuable family heirloom—a crown—locked in Keene’s safe bearing six combinations. The will also mentioned a monetary inheritance and the “COA,” or certificate of authenticity, owned by “the lord Robert tipped off.” The family had assumed this had referred to Uncle Robert, but Robert always claimed no knowledge of the will.
When Angus shows Sylvia the copy of her grandfather’s will, she is astounded that her grandfather is somehow connected to Angus’s extended family. On top of that, Angus constructs a family tree revealing Sylvia as his great step-aunt! Could Sylvia really have travelled through time?
Angus decodes numbers in the will to October 12, 1216, the date when King John of England lost his crown jewels in East Anglia. Sylvia then explains that her grandfather had planned on entrusting the family heirloom to her so she could guarantee its donation to the Duchamp Museum upon his death. Angus realizes the Duchamp Museum had been bought out decades ago by the Aufero family, through Edward Aufero, Mitchell’s father—and Keene’s lawyer. Sylvia further explains that her grandfather had placed an important document pertaining to his will in Robert’s King Arthur book, directing Robert to keep the book safely hidden.
A second visit to Uncle Robert’s house uncovers Keene Tipton’s document within the book, a sheet of vellum bearing a medieval roll of arms, the heraldic emblems of various English families. Angus examines the names on each individual coat of arms and notices one, Tiptoff, is very similar to Keene’s name, Tipton. But this is certainly not a COA.
Suspicious of Troy’s nonchalance with the damaged herm, Angus has the broken sculpture piece analyzed. The sculpture is a fake. Further research uncovers that on the day Troy had dropped off the sculpture, the FBI was at the museum investigating fraudulent auction sales. Mitchell Aufero goes through great lengths to defend an unregulated art antiquities market flooded with undetectable forgeries, though refuses to admit to Angus any knowledge of phony art works auctioned off at his museum.
A conversation with Angus’s father reveals that Angus’s great-grandfather, Pierce Wendell—the same Pierce who had fathered Robert with another woman—had briefly married a woman who became infatuated with her stepson, Jacob Wendell, Angus’s grandfather. This woman was none other than Miriam—Sylvia’s cousin! This had occurred after Miriam had first married Edward Aufero.
Obsessed now with somehow wresting the crown out of Aufero hands, Angus decodes the six combinations in Keene’s will and is able to sneak the crown out of Keene’s safe in Mitchell Aufero’s basement. Later, he realizes another clue in the will was a play on words: “the lord Robert tipped off” was really “the Lord Robert Tiptoff.” Rushing back to Uncle Robert’s house, he discovers the “COA” is an inventory list, in Lord Robert Tiptoff’s hand, on the back of the Tiptoff Coat of Arms.
The whole plot is thus laid bare: Back in 1943, Miriam had held the door shut in the hopes Sylvia would burn to death along with her grandfather. Upon Keene’s death, his probate lawyer, Edward Aufero, had altered the will, passing the inheritance onto his future wife, Miriam. Edward then used the inheritance to buy out the Duchamp Museum, discarding both Miriam and her sister Annie later on.
Sylvia is now resolved to confront her cousin Miriam, now living in Florida under home hospice care. Miriam recognizes Sylvia, and the shock sends Miriam into cardiac arrest. Sylvia holds her hand, absolving the woman’s past sins with forgiveness.
The next morning is a new beginning to the story. It is again the morning of September 5, 2014, but now Angus has an interview at the Duchamp Museum. To celebrate, he goes to the bookstore and is urged by an elderly woman named Sylvia to ask out her goddaughter, Charlotte, the young cashier who had always showed Angus some attention. Before leaving, Angus considers asking her to his cousin’s wedding the next day...the same exact wedding he had attended with Sylvia...in another time?
In this novel, a young man finds a naked woman on his couch and must confront the possibility that she’s traveled through time.
Angus Wendell is a quietly ordinary man. He has an unspectacular job, lives alone in an apartment on Long Island, and possesses “a face no more arresting than the next one in the throng.” But his routine is thrown into disarray when one day he wakes up and spots a naked woman—a stranger—fast asleep on his couch. When she finally stirs, Sylvia Tipton, as astonished at the circumstances as Angus is, confesses she has no idea how she got there; the last thing she remembers is a terrible fire that consumed her grandfather. And then the shocking incident takes a turn for the weird: Sylvia claims to live in Brooklyn, but when Angus drives her to the address she provides, there’s a McDonald’s there. In addition, she’s never seen a cellphone before—or watched Star Wars—and seems wildly out of touch with the world. Finally, Angus discovers the source of her confusion: She thinks it’s 1943 (it’s actually 2014). But when Angus starts to check her claims, in particular regarding her family and the fire, he discovers they’re true. Even more startling, he inadvertently learns that he and Sylvia have a connection, which causes Angus to believe there’s something suspicious about the nature of his family’s business—the clan owns a museum and deals in antiquities. Marullo (Gludman’s Proof, 2013, etc.) masterfully presents a wildly implausible story in such a way that it seems possible—Sylvia is astonishingly convincing: “The ironclad sincerity through which she narrated events in her life made it feel natural to take everything she said as gospel.” And beneath the fantastical mystery and crime drama is a sensitive examination of Angus’ discontentment with life—he has a degree in art history and wants to pursue a career in that cosmos but is discouraged by his hilariously dysfunctional family. The author has an impressive talent for blending farcical comedy with emotional authenticity.
A refreshingly quirky and sharply written family tale.
