The first question I had when I began Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s much anticipated second novel, Long Island Compromise, was obviously what is a ‘Long Island compromise’…?

I’ll cut to the chase – it refers to what ‘good Catholic girls’ do when hooking up with the local Jewish boys, yet still want to marry as virgins. Enough said.

But the ‘compromise’ in the title actually refers to more than sex. The story focuses on the history of the Fletchers, an ‘…extraordinarily, absurdly, kidnappably rich…’ American Jewish family, over a couple of generations, and the decisions that each of them make in order to navigate life. Decisions might be too strong a word, because it is a story about compromises – people gritting their teeth and doing what’s expected.

There has never been, in the history of all human interaction, a way for a woman to explain effectively that she’s calm when a man has suggested she isn’t.

The story begins dramatically – wealthy businessman, Carl Fletcher, is kidnapped from his driveway and held for ransom. A week later, he is returned to his wife and kids and appears to be ‘okay’. Their life returns to ‘normal’, and the Fletchers are comforted by the knowledge that their money affords them safety (despite that being why Carl was targeted in the first place).

Fast forward a few decades and we meet Carl’s adult children – Nathan, who is crippled by chronic fear and poor performance in his work at a law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, who had one hit and has since floundered (but family wealth furnishes his drug and sex habits); and Jenny, who has spent her life trying to prove that she is not a product of her family’s wealth (and yet ends up doing precisely that).

Nathan Fletcher had grown … into not so much a whole man but a collection of tics: a composite panic attack whose brain lived in both the unspeakable past and the terrifying future and rarely in a particular current moment unless that moment contained more fear than the past and future put together and therefore deserved his complete attention. It was the fear that always felt like the truth to him.

At 464 pages, there’s a lot more to this story, but the themes – tradition, ambition, success and failure, inter-generational trauma, trauma responses, fear of the future, the burden of inheritance, and loyalty – run through each character’s story.

I started the book anticipating a tone similar to that of Fleishman is in Trouble – light and funny, but with sharp observations about people in relational distress. That’s not Long Island. This is a whole lot darker. There are some genuinely funny moments but they are of the satirical variety, and sometimes the switch between trauma and satire was swift, making it difficult to fully engage with the humour (I had this nagging feeling that it’s not okay to laugh about some of this stuff…).

Brodesser-Akner examines generational wealth from a number of angles. Predominantly, she considers the extent to which being born into money alters your world view. But she also pokes fun at the Fletchers, who lean on their humble ‘we-came-to-America-with-nothing’ origin story, while at the same time embrace ostentatious demonstrations of their wealth.

…the understanding of what had really gone wrong in their lives revealed itself to them, which was that the tide pool you’re born into is only manageable if someone gives you swimming lessons. Or, put more simply, in order to be a normal person, you had to at least see normal people.

Don’t expect to like any of the characters – they all do self-entitlement in their own unique way, and most of them are really good at making bad decisions. Were the characters slightly too exaggerated? And their circumstances laboured? I think so but, Brodesser-Akner gets away with it because her writing is very good (especially when capturing the neuroses and anxieties of the adult Fletcher children) and the structure of the book is impressive.

“You’re not bringing your flat iron?” Ruth asked. Jenny dropped her hands. “I’ve never used it. It is a wish you made, that flat iron. It didn’t come true. I’m sorry. Most dreams don’t.”

In terms of family epics, I was reminded of novels by Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Safran Foer – so if they’re on your reading list, you’ll enjoy Long Island.

3/5

I received my copy of Long Island Compromise from the publisher, Hachette Australia & New Zealand, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Beamer goes to rehab. It’s fancy.

They ate poached scallops. They ate wild salmon. The chickens they ate were grass-fed; their steaks had come from cows that went to the finest schools. Everything had morels or truffles in them – everything, even the oatmeal.