Long Island Compromise

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

“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.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Jewish

ebook

First published July 9, 2024

About the author

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is also the creator and executive producer of its Emmy-nominated limited series adaptation for FX. Long Island Compromise is her second novel.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a sprawling family novel full of dysfunction, a lack of self awareness among many characters, something of a mystery and an exploration of inherited trauma. This is an incredibly densely written novel, at times too dense but it’s also funny and charming and frustrating and utterly absorbing.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

TW: S&M; self-abasement, kidnapping

Outlier review. I did NOT enjoy Taffy Brodesser-Anker’s “Long Island Compromise”. Perhaps it’s my age. I found too much graphic S&M and gratuitous self-abasement for which I really didn’t see the necessity. She could have told her story without that.

Next, the characters are whiny self-entitled wealthy people. They were grating. It was difficult to continue reading, because when I encounter people like that, I remove myself from any situation around them. Additionally, it’s difficult to read about characters complaining about their abundant trust funds. I didn’t see humor in the characters’ neurosis nor predicaments.

This is a story about intergenerational trauma regarding wealth. Yes, wealthy people are traumatized by wealth. Add to that, the family is Jewish American, which carries all the intergenerational trauma involving the history of Jews, most recently the Holocaust. Now we have a toxic stew of “Your Grandfather survived the Holocaust for this?” to “wah-wah my life was too easy for me and now I have no direction and its money’s fault”.

All the Jewish female characters were despicable. I cringed reading how the mother and grandmother talked to their offspring. I didn’t find humor in the way they talked to their children/grandchildren/daughter-in-law’s.

Plot summary: a patriarch is kidnapped for a week. This trauma is never addressed. The matriarch (his mother) wants everyone to ignore that it happened. “It happened to his body, not his mind”. This PTSD claims each family member’s soul in a different way. The story is told by character, with the first character’s, Beamer (the middle child), story. Unfortunately, Brodesser-Akner gives Beamer far too much storyline involving TMI.

The reader learns of all the characters personal struggles, their POV’s. She is a clever writer which is why I continued reading this 446-page novel. These people made their fortune off Styrofoam. That alone is hysterical.

Her prose deserves 5 stars. Her plot deserves 5 stars because it’s so layered in its telling. The characters get 1 star for complexity. I believe she could have accomplished what she was trying to tell without the shock-value of Beamer and the cringe-worthy value of Ruth and the whininess of Jenny. Again, I’m an outlier, and I don’t think I am the target audience.

My review is based upon an ARC that I received from my public library.

[Caroline O'Donoghue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel as though I’ve read many, many books in the past couple of years where the main character does a couple of morally iffy things and then spends the bulk of the third act apologising and taking their friends out to dinner. “Yeah man, that was pretty messed up, what you did” is an exchange I never ever need to read again as long as I live. Narratively we all understand the need for growth and lesson-learning, but I feel recently we’ve over-corrected. The greatest thing about novels as an art form is that novels quite literally force you to sit with things. You have to sit and think about what it might be like to be a traumatised narcissist with OCD and no ethical concerns whatsoever about the homeless shelters that you are helping to convert into dorms, and you have to do that (in Bernard’s chapters) for 150 pages. And I think that’s great.

Every single person int his book is a snob, a pervert or an asshole. Even the side characters in the tangents of this book are snobs, perverts and assholes. The graveyard con artist? Chef’s kiss. I love Taffy Brodesser-Akner, I think she’s one of the finest prose writers working today, and I loved this book so much. One million stars.

[Haley Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

will not be reading negative reviews about this one because i am obsessed and found it RIVETING. no notes

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let’s get this out of the way up front, so to speak: The title of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s new novel, “Long Island Compromise,” is a reference to anal sex. That says something about the story’s subtlety.

Not that anybody’s turning to Brodesser-Akner for subtlety. Her previous novel, the spectacular debut “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” crashed onto the scene with klaxons blaring. That tale of a marriage collapsing was a dazzling explosion of comic brilliance that proved the New York Times profile writer could be even more outrageously engaging when she made up her own characters.

But following up after a great debut carries the mixed blessings of inherited wealth, which, as it happens, is the heavy-handed subject of “Long Island Compromise.” It’s a story about the children of a rich family who struggle to fulfill the promise of their wildly successful parents.

The Fletchers of Middle Rock, Long Island, are the very embodiment of the Jewish American Dream. With all the curdled envy that Brodesser-Akner can channel so hilariously, the gossipy narrator tells us, “They were the pinnacle.” They are at once fiercely defensive of their heritage and determined to pursue all the trappings (and plastic surgeries) of assimilation. Eat your heart out, Jay Gatsby: The Fletchers live in the largest house “on a block of extremely robbable homes” with a deck that extends out over the Long Island Sound like it “was their own personal swimming pool.”

Their origin story has been retold and polished like a book of the Torah: Grandpa Zelig escaped the Nazis and made it to the United States with nothing but the clothes on his back and the formula for a revolutionary packaging compound called Styrofoam. A few decades later....

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Of the 550 books I've rated so far on Goodreads, this is only the 3d or 4th time I've given a book just 1 star.
And it's well-deserved.

This book is even worse than the author's debut novel, "Fleishman Is in Trouble," which I felt was partly redeemed by the stunning last few pages.

The premise of this second novel could have led to an actually good book: That the true story of a father's kidnapping isn't his 5-day ordeal or his apparently miraculous rescue; the real story starts the day after he returns, with the ongoing impact on his life and his family.
I will even acknowledge that the last 100 or so pages of "Long Island Compromise" finally develop an interesting plot, with some unexpected twists and a happily cynical ending.

However, to get to that small reward, a reader must plow through some 350 pages of the author's trademark obsession with kinky sex, BDSM, drugs, slobberingly described over-the-top lifestyles, and whiny, self-indulgent rich people.
Bo-ring.
Also, author Taffy Brokesser-Akner indulges over and over in sophomoric satire of easy targets--ie, castrating Jewish mothers and wives with Long Island accents.

Isn't it possible that a kidnapping could affect a family in traumatic ways that have nothing to do with narcissism, wasting obscene amounts of money, and kinky sex? But Brokesser-Akner traded imagination and creativity, for a quick best-selling fix of sex and money.

(So why did I read TWO books by this author, if I despise her oeuvre so much? Sigh... Each was chosen by a different book club I belong to. I love all 4 of my book clubs, but I will skip a club meeting rather than ever again read anything by this alleged writer.)

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I HATED this book. I should have quit reading it, but by the time I realized how much I disliked it I was far enough in I didn't want to abandon it because I'm already far behind on my reading goal for the year. I got sucked into the kidnapping plot at the beginning of the book that takes place when the three major protagonists of the book are small children or not born yet. Then when the plot skips ahead and they're horrible adults I lost complete interest. It's not like it's poorly written or anything. I'm sure plenty of people will sing the praises of this book. I just loathed every one of the characters in this book. I get that it's also sort of the point. I don't care. Life is too short for me to want to spend it with the awful characters in this book.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Jonathan Franzen were Jewish, understood men and women equally well, and had a slightly less dry sense of humor Crossroads would be Long Island Compromise. (ETA 7/24 -- It appears people read this as an indication I don't like Franzen. I love Franzen! I like every one of his novels. Crossroads was my favorite book last year and The Corrections is an all-time favorite. He just doesn't understand women as well as he does men, and he is not a rollicking box of humor.) I don't have time for a full review, but will say that at its root this is about trauma, trauma based on our own experiences, including the experience of living with the trauma of other family members. There is a boatload of storylines, this covers all the members of the Fletcher family, and each storyline ties in with the others, but addresses different trauma responses. Brodesser-Akner also digs into societal problems that bother her with a deft touch (rather than Franzen's pedantic finger-wagging), most especially ancestral wealth (both its negative impacts and the inability to grow wealth in the way people could in the 20th century.) The book is filled with humor, bawdiness, pathos, and surprises (especially the resolution of the kidnapping storyline.) It is brilliant. (The first 50 pages are a little overwhelming, but it all makes sense at the end.) I see this as the love child of Franzen, Phillip Roth, and Chekov. Your enjoyment of this book will likely depend on whether that sounds like an appealing (literary) menage a trois.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big, sprawling family saga that is riveting, funny, surprising, and smart -- and deeply moving. A successful Long Island father and businessman is kidnapped, and now, roughly forty years later, he and his wife and his mother and his three children are still coping (badly, SO badly) with the legacy. They're all haunted, damaged by the trauma even if (in theory) the kidnapping ended well: Dad came home! But beneath the surface swim the sharks of trauma. It's a brilliant book and I loved it in much the same way I devoured Jonathan Franzen's THE CORRECTIONS and Jenny Jackson's PINEAPPLE STREET.

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wealthy Long Island factory owner Carl Fletcher is kidnapped by masked men and held for ransom. Days later, he is freed without much physical injury, but life for his young family will never be the same. Decades later, his now grown children are each uniquely impacted by the trauma. Nathan is a lawyer with a beautiful family…but he’s also dealing with non-stop, crippling anxiety. Beamer is a screenwriter whose career is faltering while his addictions and odd sexual proclivities are only growing more intense. Jenny, always the academic star, is now middle aged and still hasn’t found anything she’s truly passionate about. When a family member dies at the same time the Fletchers’ finances take a turn for the worse, the siblings are drawn back into each other’s orbit…and must face their demons in order to experience growth.

I loved this book. The author has such a talent for witty prose. She balances comedic circumstances with deep, heartfelt emotions like no other. Her wacky characters would feel cartoonish in the hands of a less deft writer, but instead they are complex and compelling. By the time you finish reading this book, you will feel like a full-fledged member of the Fletcher clan.

[Ari Levine · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5, rounded up. Relentlessly repetitious and tediously discursive. This is a pale imitation of Philip Roth's American Pastoral in terms of subject matter: the implosion of a wealthy Jewish family demented by multi-generational trauma and weapons-grade neurosis. And shamelessly derivative of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections: place individual family members in extreme and escalating situations of emotional torture and self-destructive peril, and watch them squirm. But this just delivers unmodulated cringe, crude satire, and painfully unsubtle social commentary over 400+ pages.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing with this novel is that I found myself smiling, then laughing, on several occasions. This was unexpected. This is not my typical run with a book.

The thing, too, is that the story in this case has all the overt signals of a drama. So, really, I could not have guessed.

In this contemporary fable, a family rehashes a long-ago traumatic incident. Each family member is given their proper spotlight, no one is out to charm you — well, a man named Beamer is — and your precious virtue will not be comforted.

Yet I laughed and I laughed, all the way to these five stars. How smart this all was, beyond depicting lives that appear full when they are empty, or revealing ostensible success as so many personal failures, under the varnish. I now need to read Fleishman Is in Trouble, that much is gleefully clear. But I also need to thank my buddy reader, the excellent Jennifer, for not minding my meager contributions to the exchange, which usually went the way of “This book is cracking me up.” I was in great intellectual company with both her and the author; I was just that dude laughing in the corner, over there.

I’m not sharing any of the funny passages, below. For witty banter and comical tangents, you'll have to read this for yourself.

“She remembered a term she learned in a linguistics class for the way a word stops making sense if you stare at it for too long: semantic evacuation. That was what it felt like for Jenny. The world no longer had coherence. […] People who don’t know the term semantic evacuation sometimes call this feeling depression.”

“Our grandmothers would often tell us that no matter how much you envy someone, if everyone threw their package of problems into the center of the room and was given a choice of anyone else’s, you would, guaranteed, pick up your own. We didn’t know if that was always true, especially when it came to the Fletchers, but perhaps now we did. Perhaps now we would truly say that we would pick our own problems over even theirs.”

If you need to identify with characters, or approve of their behaviour to be happy, do not pick this up. I mean it: avoid! The Fletchers have issues. But from me? Oh my god, five stars in a heartbeat.

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had always wanted to read this female contemporary Jewish New-Yorker’s novel, Fleishman Is In Trouble, but never did. Then Claire Danes and Lizzie Kaplan starred in the streaming series, two of my favorite actresses emoting in a favorite haunt of a park, and I thought for sure I’d grab the novel to know more. But just then this book was released and there’s something about what’s new… and then Charles asked if I wanted to read it with him.

What a strange ride this was. After one of the most gripping literary starts that sets up a past trauma, the author exudes a mean unpleasantness when first illustrating each sibling. By exaggerating their flaws, she cages each one in a lifestyle. Which you hate most will depend on you: for me it went from most to least as I read, the first brother depicted boorish and empty; the second frustratingly ineffectual but trying to keep it together; the daughter battling her own flaws while trying to make sense. In the end, I found it to be a very good book, and I know that reading this with Charles elevated it for me. I also doubt I’ll ever read another by this author.

[Liz]

Life is too short to waste my time on this. It started off funny but quickly went downhill and became vulgar.

TW - S&M

[Bonnie Goldberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

HAPPY PUB WEEK! (Bonus content - the piece TBA wrote in the NYT about the real life story behind the kidnapping plot - must read)

Every now and then a book comes along that is so good that it is also so hard to read. This is one of those books. This book has possibly the best propulsive opening scene I have ever read, followed by one of the hardest chapters dealing with sexual transgressions and drug use that I could barely stomach. Then we veered back into a chapter that was so funny that I actually laughed and laughed.

Brodesser-Akner is a gifted writer. I enjoyed Fleishmann is in Trouble, but perhaps not as much as my peers. But her NYT article on attending a Taylor Swift concert was one of the best pieces of non-fiction narrative writing I have read. This book contains multitudes. The kidnapping of a family patriarch based on a similar incident of someone Brodesser-Akner knew when she was a child. The story of Jews in America - how they got there, what they did when they arrived, and where they are now. The story of unlikable adult siblings managing their scarred and traumatic upbringing. And bigger questions - about how money corrupts and soothes, how generations evolve and adapt, and more. Highly recommend. Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the e-ARC.

[Anna Meaney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long Island Compromise follows the Fletchers in the aftermath of two life changing events: the kidnapping and subsequent return of patriarch Carl Fletcher, and later the revelation that the factory that provided the family with their enormous wealth is suddenly worthless.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner has such a distinct writing style, often focused on maximalism. It's very funny and almost feels like you're gossiping with a friend. She clearly knows her characters so well; their neuroses, hopes, and fears are all laid bare for the reader. If more was going on, this would potentially make a great character driven work. My problem with this book lies in the fact that everything is totally static.

In the beginning pages, the kidnapping occurs. The next 80% of the book is devoid of action. In the first three sections of the book, we are introduced to each of the Fletcher children. We are dropped into the lives of these characters as they worry their way through life and eventually, respectively, find out that their money is gone. Everything interesting happens in the past, though. Each section is like a mini life story for each sibling, but nothing ever happens in the present. Why chose the story to happen "now" when all the events are past? By the time every character is set up and the bombshell is dropped, the novel uses comparatively few pages for the characters to actually do anything.

In fact, as much as I found the first 3/4 of the book to be frustratingly repetitive, it didn't compare to the disappointment of the last 1/4 which is so rushed and so theme heavy. Multiple paragraphs of Brodesser-Akner saying to the reader "This Is The Theme by the way." The conflict is built up so much and then resolved almost instantly.

This is my own fault, also, but I'm a little tired of reading books where the whole thing is that rich people are also unhappy, and maybe the cause of their unhappiness is money.

Also can we discuss how WEIRD it is that the people who kidnap Carl claim to be Palestinian doing it to punish Carl for being Jewish? Then it turns out they're not Palestinian but actually Black militants? And then in the end it's actually Ike? But that revelation is dropped and then not addressed at all

[Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update 7/9/24: Reposting my review to celebrate that today is publication day!

And the Fletcher children had not been immune to the inertia of all rich kids, which was to lack the imagination that the money could ever possibly stop coming in. They spent their money like third-generation American children do: quickly, and without thinking too hard about it.
…
No one in the history of Middle Rock, of Long Island, of New York, of maybe America and therefore the world had had the potential and rigor for achievement that Jenny Fletcher had had. When finally she fell, it was from the top of the skyscraper. And like most such falls, it was a suicide.
But hold on. Like all the other Bible stories, it’s best told from the beginning.
…
Maybe that was the real Long Island Compromise, that you can be successful on your own steam or you can be a basket case, and whichever you are is determined by the circumstances into which you were born. Your poverty will create a great drive in your children. Or your wealth will doom them into the veal that Jenny described at her science fair, people who are raised to never be able to support a life so that when they’re finally allowed to wander outside their cages for the first time on their way to their slaughter, they can’t even stand up on their own legs. But the people who rise to success on their own never stop feeling the fear at the door, and the people lucky enough to be born into comfort and safety never become fully realized people in the first place. And who is to say which is better?

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for sending me an ARC of Long Island Compromise in exchange for an honest review. The Goodreads description perfectly summarizes the story here (if anything, it says a bit too much), so I’ll jump to my thoughts.

I expect most people will come to Long Island Compromise having already read Ms. Brodesser-Akner’s debut bestseller Fleischman Is in Trouble. I’m happy to report this novel shares so much of what made her first book so very good. Long Island Compromise is a great character study. Beamer, Nathan, Jenny, and Ruth are all rendered in exquisite detail. They’re not particularly good people, but they are captivating in their self-sabotage. But the real star of the book is the writing itself. There are so many quotable lines and paragraphs; I must have highlighted a hundred of them. It has a fun, winking style as if the story is being told by another Middld Rock resident, alternately drawn to and repulsed by the Fletchers.

Long Island Compromise is a beautifully written, compelling story of the perils of inherited wealth. Recommended.

[Tara Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filled the Succession-shaped hole in my life.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author also wrote “Fleishman is in Trouble.” Review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I should have known I would be in for it again, reading this book. What do I mean exactly? This author knows how to write stories that encompass dysfunctional characters. In this novel, the author tells the story of a wealthy, dysfunctional suburban Jewish family.

“Do you want to hear a story about a terrible ending?”

This is the first sentence of the book. Well, if that isn’t a set up, I don’t know what is.

The story begins in 1980, when the father, Carl Fletcher is kidnapped and tortured for ransom. He is eventually returned, but the event affects him and his family in ways they are unable to let go. Which is the rest of the novel. The emotional fallout.

The story is told in 3rd person perspective by their 3 children, now as adults. How does this kidnapping create generational trauma, repression and/or even insulate them from the rest of the world? The children will tell readers. And, this is where the author gets really good with her well-developed characters – as neurotic as they may be. They are believable. And, interesting. With the storyline, adding some humor to the quirkiness.

This is a somewhat touching novel with sad, anxious, messy characters who may also be annoying, too. Do they lead us to that “terrible ending?” (No spoilers from me.)

[Jessica Gregory · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only got 100 pages in but I’m marking this as read because this aged me 20 years trying to read this.

[Kristel | Your Novel Ambitions · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sprawling family drama about the Jewish American dream, inherited trauma, the paradox of generational wealth, and three rich siblings who, despite being naturally gifted in their respective fields, struggle to fulfill the promise of their successful parents, Carl and Ruth.

Does wealth truly protect us? Or does it mark us as easy targets, leaving us vulnerable to the most unthinkable crimes? This is the question Ruth Fletcher stews over when her husband, Carl, is kidnapped one day in 1980. Their children, Nathan and Beamer, are only 8 and 6 at the time and seem perfectly oblivious to the crisis unfolding on their block of extremely robbable homes.

Carl is returned after one week in exchange for a hefty ransom and never emotionally recovers. This is in large part because Ruth and his mother, Phyllis, insist the kidnapping “didn’t happen to YOU (Carl) - it happened to your BODY!” As if there’s a difference somehow, but we quickly learn emotional intelligence isn’t Phyllis or Ruth’s strong suit. The mantra is only one example of the family’s obsession to sweep the kidnapping under the rug. After all, the kids seem mostly fine. Ruth gives birth to a third child, Jenny, who is full of academic promise and by all measures appears to be the child who will carry the torch of the Fletchers’ legacy. If only the adults can maintain the fiction that Carl’s kidnapping somehow happened in a vacuum and did not cast a ripple effect on Fletcher children.

Fast forward several decades later where Beamer is engaged in some seriously self-abased behavior and it’s clear the Fletchers are absolutely traumatized. Buckle up, readers. Taffy Brodesser-Akner delivers a whip smart book about a family that puts the fun back into dysfunctional. Edoardo Ballerinj is the perfect narrator, too.

CW: self-abasement, S&M, drug abuse, death of parent and grandparent

[Jonetta · Rating 4 out of 5]

the setup…
Meet the Fletchers. They’re a wealthy Jewish family living in the Long Island township of Middle Rock who were shaped by one event decades ago. In 1980, Carl Fletcher, son of Phyllis and the late Zelig, was kidnapped from his driveway and held for ransom. His pregnant wife Ruth and two young sons, Nathan and Bernard, lived in terror until the money was exchanged and he was returned home. They all resumed their lives as if nothing had happened and daughter Jenny was born soon after, not having been a part of the trauma but raised by those who were forever changed by what happened. Fast forward to present day and the effects of that one event resonate in the adult Fletcher children in the most destructive ways.

the heart of the story…
Everyone in this family lived their lives going forward based on how that trauma left them back in 1980. No one talked about it in healthy ways and the children were left to their own untrained devices to manage through. Nathan, the oldest, suffered from chronic fear and became a lawyer with a dead end career path. Bernard, now called Beamer, became a Hollywood screenwriter, stuck in creating stories that all involved a kidnapping and immersed himself in self destructive medications (drugs, sex and overstimulation). Jenny spent her life trying to prove she wasn’t her family. It’s a compelling and rich family saga, laced with humor, tragedy and extraordinary dynamics.

the narration…
Ballerini is one of my favorite narrators and he adeptly captured the essence of each family member. It’s a seemingly impossible task but he delivered an outstanding performance.

the bottom line…
The stories were painful to experience and this complicated family wasn’t always the most sympathetic. Be forewarned that the depravity of Beamer’s is hard to suffer through. The final revelations were sort of twisty, creating an irony that changed everything. It’s long but so worth the incredible journey.

Posted on Blue Mood Café

(Thanks to Libro.fm and Random House Audio for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.)

[Sally Darr Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is dense—sometimes in a way that makes moments even more hilarious and sometimes in a way that feels superfluous.

The middle 300ish pages are split up into three chapters, and each chapter is dedicated to a Fletcher child. Be prepared for a book that is mostly character analysis, bookended by plot.

I wanted an entire book about Beamer and Noelle!!! Beamer was my favorite child to read about, and I didn’t have nearly as much fun reading about Nathan or Jenny. Beamer is the first kid you read about, so the book started off really strong for me, but I got bored after Beamer’s chapter was over. The book wrapped up nicely…but I was ready for it to be over.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fictionalized account of a true story, Long Island Compromise opens in 1980, when prominent businessman Carl Fletcher is ambushed in his driveway, abducted to a secret location, and brutally tortured by unknown assailants. The rest of the book contemplates the repercussions of this event upon the family.

The novel is loosely divided into three parts, each narrated in the third person from the perspectives of Fletcher's now-adult children. All three, haunted by their father’s overbearing nature and sheltered upbringing, cope with the emotional scars in their own dysfunctional ways.

Bernard, or Beamer, is a charismatic, drug-fueled screenwriter obsessed with stories of kidnapping. His life is a string of pretend phone calls, sometimes to avoid confrontation, sometimes to keep up appearances. Nathan, a jittery, submissive land-use attorney, is entangled in shady business dealings, while his upright Orthodox wife dreams of kitchen renovations. Jenny, an intellectual drifter, floats aimlessly through life, until she becomes absorbed in the world of labor organizing.

Ruth, their mother, initially seems like a possible source of sympathy. However, her self-indulgence is revealed in her inability to understand her children’s struggles in a world where everything has come easily to them.

Against a backdrop filled with sharp, insightful commentary on modern life, the novel weaves its way toward several twists. It strikes a fine balance of humor, heartbreak, and intellectual depth. The obnoxious characters, ultimately, do not elicit enough sympathy or empathy for readers to truly care about what happens to them.

[Ana WJ]

Forgot to add that I completed this a while ago lmao

[Shereadbookblog · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Polish Jewish immigrant escaping the Holocaust comes to New York where he eventually accumulates wealth by opening a factory. When he dies suddenly, his son, Carl is called back to the family compound on Long Island to run the business. In 1980, Carl is kidnapped and held for $200,000 ransom which is paid. The kidnapping haunts Carl for the rest of his life, as well as affecting his three children, Nathan, Beamer, and the soon to be born Jenny. And thus the novel embarks on recounting the lives of the siblings, as well as those of the generations that came before, the after effects of the kidnapping and the guiding influences of their wealth.

Cleverly written with touches of wit, the story gets mired down at times with almost a stream of consciousness accounting of their lives and in particular their self loathing. Both historical and contemporary, it is a long novel (almost 500 pages) that touches on American Jewishness, the privilege of wealth, inherited trauma, self sabotaging , family dysfunction, women’s roles. There is a bit of a fairy tale ending and it will be interesting to see what readers think of it. I think this is a book that many will love and about which others will be less enamored.

Thanks to #Netgalley and #randomhouse for the DRC.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loooove the way Brodesser-Akner writes but this was a slog. You had to pay very close attention, which was tough to do because everyone in it absolutely sucked.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a wealthy Jewish family living on (as the title suggests) Long Island, in an enervating mostly Jewish suburb where they are the most well-to-do in an enclave of the well-to-do, a story principally concerned with generational trauma and the burden of wealth. The novel starts with a prologue in which Carl, the family patriarch, is kidnapped, brutalized, and held for a week until his wife, Ruth, pays the ransom. That event informs the family’s ensuing history: though most of the novel takes place decades later, its psychic burden influences how the family’s lives have unfolded since. After the kidnapping, Carl was left a shell of a man, and his controlling wife, Ruth, has devoted her life to protecting him, with her children her secondary concern. Nathan, the eldest son, is prey to anxieties and is a timid collection of tics that hamper his law career. Beamer is a Hollywood screenwriter of middling success (whose screenplays all feature kidnappings) who tries to soothe his underlying terror with secret addictions to drugs and BDSM. Jenny, who was in utero when her mother dropped off the ransom money, lives her life as an in-your-face protest to the family wealth; she gives away most of the very large quarterly disbursements every family member receives and is a union organizer. She’s also depressed to the point of dysfunction. They’re all trundling along on their unhappy tracks when a crisis (and a bar mitzvah) brings them together: the polystyrene factory that is the source of the family wealth is kaput and the money tap is abruptly turned off.

There’s a lot of satiric humour in this interesting, entertaining tome, but I wish the characters had been more likeable—heck, I wish any of them had been the least bit likeable. I listened to the audiobook, and Edoardo Ballerini’s brilliant, impeccable narration was spot on and kept everything humming along.

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was attracted to this book by its cover. It evoked nostalgic memories of when I grew up in the 70s. I also like books that take place in New York. This book explored the post-traumatic stress disorder/ trauma experienced by a well-to-do family on Long Island. The father had been kidnapped years ago when the kids were small (and one in-utero). Even though this incident was resolved inside of a week, the mental fallout resonated throughout the decades. The family business that provided the adult children with hefty dividends throughout the year was on its last legs.

The now adult children were introduced to the reader in depth with their own sections that provided a clear character study of each. All three were basically head cases. It brought into debate whether having the security cushion of guaranteed money without doing anything was a healthy situation. The youngest child Jenny renounced the money by giving it away to organizations that mirrored her socialistic ideals. The oldest child Nathan joined a law firm through a family connection, yet chose a tract where he didn't have to deal with people and could hide behind his law books and documents. Beamer needed a treasure trove of pills and abusive sexual dominatrix meetups to get through his days. He also fancied himself a screenwriter- yet every draft involved a kidnapping incident.

This was a very thought-provoking book dabbling in issues such as mental trauma, marital fidelity, religion, personal responsibility, and the haves and have nots.

[Derek Driggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: I need to bump this up to five stars because of how much the writing has stuck with me. The voice is so, so strong, with equal parts satire and insight. My issue of not being able to follow all the timeline jumps will just have to be solved with a second reading.

Just fantastically written. I’m so impressed with this writer—she reminds me of Jeffrey Eugenedes and Franzen in the depth of her character exploration and her hyper-aware narration. Her humor was scathing but kept the reader in on the joke. It’s hard to find another book to start after this level of quality.

For me, I struggled with following the jumps in the timeline, but I know that’s my personal weakness as a reader. It was made worse by the fact that I chose to do this one on audiobook during a very busy start to the semester.

If I have a chance to slow down and read a physical copy, I’m sure I’ll be even more impressed.

What to read now??