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Harry March's troubles begin when Lapham, a self-aggrandizing, ostentatious multimillionaire, commences construction of a 36,000-square-foot house (complete with a cutting-edge air-conditioner that cools his entire eight-acre property) directly across the creek from Harry's island home in Quogue, in the Hamptons.... to Harry, Lapham represents everything that is ruining modern civilization. So he sends daily notes to his nemesis by way of a remote-control toy motorboat, which read: "Mr. Lapham, tear down that house!" When his efforts fail, he turns to politics by other means.
"Light satire that will amuse readers more than arouse them." - Booklist.
"Starred Review. This satisfyingly old-school stab at the Hamptons' debasement will have New Yorker readers laughing out loud, even as it sends them up, too." - PW.
"While this book ably skewers the pretensions of a rarefied corner of America, it is Rosenblatt's deeper critique of contemporary American life that really gives the novel its bite." - Library Journal.
This information about Lapham Rising was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Roger Rosenblatt's contributions to Time and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody Award, and an Emmy Award. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and several books, including the national bestseller Rules for Aging and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Lapham Rising, also a national bestseller, was his first novel.
He teaches English and Writing at Stony Brook University.
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