BookBrowse Reviews Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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The kidnapping of patriarch Carl Fletcher showcases how trauma can disrupt a family despite their efforts to ignore it.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner's second novel, Long Island Compromise, is centered around the Fletchers, a wealthy Jewish American family navigating their lives years after Carl Fletcher, the patriarch and one of the richest men in his suburb, was kidnapped. On Wednesday, March 12, 1980, as Carl was in his driveway leaving for work, he was taken, brutalized, and held for a ransom of $250,000, which we are told was the third all-time highest domestic ransom. This shook not only the family but the town of Middle Rock, a wealthy, preternaturally safe suburb in Long Island. "The Fletchers were not just rich, but extraordinarily, absurdly, kidnappably rich," the narrator explains, and they could pay the ransom less than a week later. Upon Carl's return, they believed their troubles were over. But decades later we see how their wealth has failed to protect them from the multitude of ways trauma can disrupt a family.

Despite the appearance of an intense story setup, the book is very readable, funny, and light-hearted. The title turns out to be a humorous sexual reference, perfectly capturing the overall level of seriousness. Told in the third person, the narrative mostly follows the Fletcher children: Beamer, Nathan, and Jenny. We see how the kidnapping has affected each of them into adulthood and how they face the different ways they have diminished their inheritance. "You know what they say," one character remarks, "First generation builds the house, second generation lives in it, third generation burns it down."

The plot is character-driven, but this is not a cast of sympathetic characters. Brodesser-Akner has written a family that is self-centered, privileged, and naive. Beamer is a Hollywood screenwriter who is desperate to cling to his perception of success while indulging in his surplus of vices, from drugs to sexual fixations. Nathan, the eldest, is a lawyer whose deep-rooted anxiety compromises his ability to advance at his firm, but he doesn't fear losing his job due to his family connection. Then there is Jenny, the youngest and only daughter, whose commitment to the belief that she is unlike and more righteous than her family has made her just like them.

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.

The family's approach to trauma affects every aspect of their lives. We see it in the parent-child relationships and the marriage between Carl and matriarch Ruth. Ruth's focus on Carl while neglecting her children created an environment where they could not thrive and they were unequipped to become mature well-adjusted adults: "The tide pool you're born into is only manageable if someone gives you swimming lessons."

The plot gets reinvigorated in the last 70 pages as the mystery around who was responsible for Carl's kidnapping and questions surrounding the future of the Fletchers' wealth is resolved. 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.

This review first ran in the August 21, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.