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A Novel
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Book Reviewed by:An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, and the wild legacy of trauma and inheritance, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble.
"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.
A Dybbuk in the Works
Do you want to hear a story with a terrible ending?
On Wednesday, March 12, 1980, Carl Fletcher, one of the richest men in the Long Island suburb where we grew up, was kidnapped from his driveway on his way to work. It had been an unremarkable morning. Carl had awoken and showered and dressed and gone downstairs to kiss his wife, Ruth, goodbye, same as always. Ruth had already presented their two sons, Nathan and Bernard, with their bowls of Product 19 when Carl patted them on the head and left the kitchen and headed out the door into the bright sunlight. The weather was still generally straightforward back then, and spring peeked through the slush of a latest-winter storm that was taking its time to melt. The reflection blinded him a little; his vision was still pocked with dark spots when he inserted the keys into the door of the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham he'd purchased the previous year.
His brain hadn't yet registered the sound of someone else's footsteps ...
The themes of wealth and trauma, along with the characters' Jewish identity, are central to this story. The narrator states, "The ghosts of a family's troubled past will play out riotously in the soul and on the body of each member of that family in a myriad of ways." Wealth can protect, but it can also be a hindrance, as we see with the Fletcher family. While their wealth secured Carl's return, it was also the reason he was a target. The adult children each display a laid-back approach to their careers that is a response to their safety net. No matter how much they try to force a drive or hunger that their peers have, it simply never arrives. Their livelihood has been secured for them since birth. Long Island Compromise is a funny, immersive, well-written character exploration covering decades that shows how unexamined trauma can create damage within a family that wealth can't save them from...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Letitia Asare).
Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise follows the Fletcher family, with their Jewish identity acting as one of the central themes. When someone in the family faces a mishap, they allude to a "dybbuk" as the driving factor. A "dybbuk," or "dibbuk," in Jewish folklore is an evil spirit that takes possession of a person's body, and it leaves only once its goal has been accomplished or it has been exorcised. The term is a shortened version of the Hebrew phrase "dibbuk me-ru'aḥ ra'ah," which means "a cleavage of an evil spirit."
The first mention of a dybbuk in Long Island Compromise is in the context of a machinery malfunction at the family's factory. An unexplainable accident involving a series of cables snapping is referred ...
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