just the facts, ma'am
The fact checker for a magazine has an unusual job. He has to take an article that an author has written and check any facts that are in the piece. Some facts are clear and can be checked through outside sources. Other things have to come from the writer’s source material, their interview notes, their perception of reality, which may or not be accurate. So it’s up to the fact checker to call a military widow to find out the color and size of her rug, or what her late husband’s t-shirts said, or when she found out about his affair.
It’s New York City, 2004, and after having to make that particular phone call, the Fact Checker was handed another story, called Mandeville/Green. Mandeville refers to the writer of the story, John Mandeville, and Green refers to the subject of the article, in this case, the Union Square Greenmarket. It’s a puff piece about a farmer’s market. It should be easy enough to check.
As the next few weeks go by, Fact Checker works on the Mandeville/Green article in between other short pieces with tight deadlines. He calls Tony Curtis to check on another article. But he keeps coming back to that Greenmarket article. It’s a nice story about a local farm and how they’re selling their tomatoes at the market. But there is a quote from a woman named Sylvia that is giving him pause. She says that there is something nefarious at the Greenmarket. But she doesn’t specify what it is. And the Fact Checker can’t get past that.
He decides to show up at the Union Square Greenmarket to see for himself. He ends up meeting Sylvia and tasting several varieties of tomatoes. But when he tries to ask Sylvia about what she said, he can’t get an answer from her. She asks him to come back another time to talk about what she had said to Mandeville. He comes back on Friday night and ends up at a dinner club where they are eating course after course of pork. Sylvia comes back to his place to watch baseball and ends up staying the night. She leaves him a note the next morning saying she’d get in touch with him. And then she disappears.
The Fact Checker has the option to let it go. He can sign off on the article and move on. Except that he can’t. He goes all in trying to find Sylvia again. He talks to her friends. He goes places he thinks she might be. He even goes to the farm where she had been growing tomatoes. He becomes obsessed with finding her. It takes over his life. The more he digs for the truth, the more elusive it feels to him, until he’s not sure what’s real or not and has to decide how to live in a world where facts may not always be what they seem.
The Fact Checker is a fascinating look at working at a magazine in New York. It’s about the details that make life interesting and how we choose to interpret them and turn them into the stories we tell ourselves. It’s character driven, told from the perspective of a man who struggles to understand relationships. His struggles to find the truth in a world that is rarely black and white could resonate with anyone trying to figure out what to believe in today’s America.
I thought The Fact Checker was interesting. Watching this man spin into obsession and then to confusion was quite a journey, but I liked the ending. It felt real and powerful and was a fitting conclusion to the story. I did think it got a little dry in the middle, and there was one disturbing scene where he goes to the writer’s home, but there were some scenes that were true gems. However, I would give this one a pass if you are vegan or sensitive to eating animals.
Egalleys for The Fact Checker were provided by Atlantic Monthly Press through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.
