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Long Island Compromise: A Novel
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Original price was: $30.00.$13.99Current price is: $13.99.
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family and the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • New York Magazine’s Beach Read Book Club Pick • Belletrist Book Club Pick
“A big, juicy, wickedly funny social satire.”—Oprah Daily
“Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?”
In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.
But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.
Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.
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Long Island Compromise: A Novel
Price:
Original price was: $30.00.$13.99Current price is: $13.99.
Eric Selby –
I am at 83 still a voracious reader. I especially like brilliant satire. And that’s–oy vey!–what Taffy Brodesser-Aknew’s new novel is, consistently so for over 400 pages. My husband is Jewish. And I have had a lot of Jewish students in my teaching career as well as a lot of Jewish friends. This country is culturally richer because of all the Jewish writers–think Philip Roth, for example–as well as Hollywood-ers. I watch re-runs of “All in the Family,” written by a very famous Jew. So now comes Ms. Brodesser-Akner’s novel. The novel opens in Long Island where the Fletcher family dwell in McMansions: the matrirach in hers from which she governs her grown sons and their families and one son nearby with his wife and their two sons. He oversees the family business. But suddenly he is kidnapped. But there has been no word from those who sold him away from his office. And from there come the ransom business. And then suddenly four decades have come and gone. The two brothers are now adults, one of which has a high level of sexual needs. He, with a partner, are movie producers. So if you are like me and find so much Hollywood-ish junks out there, well, this is a satire about that! And so much more. Be prepared to laugh–a lot.
Leigh Anne S –
I wanted to like this book as much as I loved Fleishman is in Trouble, but I just couldn’t. All of the characters were miserable, unlikeable people. It was a really long slog to get to an ending that really had very little redemption.
Valerie –
I read this shortly after reading The Winner by Teddy Wayne. Both deal with the psychology of coming from money, or being without but incredibly close to wealth. Both left me with lots to think over.
hi ok bk –
Taffy is a journalist through and through and uses her deep reporting abilities to paid scenes that jump off the page with detail and color. But the reason this book works so well is the way generational trauma is unpacked (and repacked and unpacked again), that makes this her most compelling work to date. We have a group chat debating the forthcoming Apple TV series casting. I am counting down the days to return to this horrible, honorable, messed up family story.
Hella Lubov –
…and now I am overwhelmed!
Kgreer –
I have read other reviews of this book because I am still trying to figure out in my mind about this story. It is a very complex story about a Jewish family from Long Island. Everything about this story is complex….the characters, the history and the story itself. I grew up in New York poor. Very poor. We lived in the projects in Manhattan and then in the Bronx and then Forest Hills where I met my husband back when we were both kids. My family moved a lot because of rising rent. Again, we were poor. Fast forward with getting married and having children we were now living in Great Neck Long Island. So back to the story…reading this story I sometimes felt like I was in the middle of this story. Things were very familiar to me. Lives are way more complex than an outsider realizes. But this author took the reader on a trip to a very complex family. I did not find this story funny. Maybe some did but not me. Can what happened in this story really happen? Why not! Do you have to be a Jew to understand? No? But I am a Jew and know of some of these complex stories. Some our relatives talked about and some my sisters and I digging.
I found this book a hard read but a very interesting read. The characters in this book have got to be the most complex characters I have ever read about. If you are interested in deep reading read this book.
Angie –
If there is a quintessential “inherited family trauma” novel, this is it.
They’re Jewish, because of course they are.
The Fletcher family is defined by an event in which the patriarch is kidnapped and held for ransom over five days. That event is a turning point which shaped his wife, his children, and his company. This isn’t a thriller or detective work, it is more of a character study in how we are affected by it. And that meaning all of us, really. As one character says, “if all of us are traumatized, then no one is traumatized.”
This novel is as Jewish as it gets, they have a rich history, have all the right neuroses and culture, and it manifests itself in many,many ways. I mean, it literally has Mandy Patinkin in it.
The last two pages are, frankly,brilliantly written.
Now, this is not your formulaic romance or mystery, and of course I love those. Who doesn’t? I didn’t love Beamer’s story, and his was the longest, and first. So 25-30% of the way through, was mediocre for me. He is unlikable and pathetic, and until the story blossoms it is a bit sad. Don’t give up on the Fletchers, though.
Themes- inherited family trauma, anxiety and depression, is being morn into money an asset or a liability? Do you ever really get over trauma or does it shape you,
There are also these anecdotal stories woven in (looks at the Finklestein scandal) that as a stand alone story are completely engaging, yet relevant to the overall story.
I’ve read 240 books so far this year, and I can tell you now, this is in my top ten.
Well Read Nana 1/24 –
I liked it ,I did but it’s not going to be for everyone I think . It’s a very obscure family drama . The father gets kidnapped when the kids are very young ,one in the womb and he feels apart for the rest of his life after those 5 days in captivity. And then we fast forward to the children all grown up . One is a complete train wreck ,one is a lost soul and the other is trying hard to live a normal happy life but is always so worried . The one son is a sex addict ,drug addict and everything else addict so he is a very entertaining train wreck. The family never talks about what happened and they just all suffer with no answers,no changes in their lives and it’s kind of sad ,honestly it’s tragic and pathetic at the same time . You just want to shake them all and slap their faces and as Cher says in Moonstruck “ snap out of it “ . The ending had a few twists that made the ending feel a bit better for these lost souls of a family that pretty much wastes away their lives in unloved , need for love and understanding state of being . Again sad but the author did use some good debachery explaining the one son which was crazy but again very entertaining. Almost 4 stars but not for everyone.
Kindle Customer –
Very long and convoluted family saga, confusing parts because it went back and forth between characters.
In the end it went on too long. Many meandering diatribes that were superfluous. Just tell the story