‘Long Island Compromise’ joins the pantheon of great American novels

“Do you want to hear a story with a horrible ending?”

Taffy Brodesser-Akner had me saying “hello” with these opening lines from the lively and entertaining “Long Island Compromise,” an epic family saga that joins the ranks of great American novels like “The Corrections” and “Middlesex.”

Brodesser-Akner, a journalist, has long brought magic to the art of the profile, and her blockbuster literary debut, “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” is a must-read while underlining sentences to text later to friends or writing on Post-its. for future inspiration. But for all its clever repartee, his first novel is also clever and even a deep indictment of sexism and misogyny, although the author almost charms us into not noticing.

“Long Island Compromise” is even more ambitious and shows that this author’s talent knows no bounds. It opened in 1980, when a super-rich factory owner named Carl Fletcher was kidnapped on the street outside his Middle Rock mansion (See: Great Neck, Long Island). He was about to get into Brougham’s Cadillac Fleetwood and drive to work when “a man jumped from behind Carl and covered him in a quick, balletic fashion,” turning “the world black.”

At home, Carl’s pregnant wife, Ruth, and two young boys didn’t suspect anything was wrong until midafternoon, when Ruth called Carl’s office to ask if they could pick up eggs and spaghetti on the way home. His secretary, who thought that Carl had taken the day off without informing her, told Ruth that she had not seen him all day. Not knowing what to do, Ruth turns to Carl’s mother, Phyllis, the family matriarch, who immediately takes charge, and within minutes, the police and the FBI are on the scene.

The residents of this wealthiest community – with Fletcher being the richest among them – are shocked that such a crime could happen at such a rare gate. “He can’t talk, he keeps talking, he can’t talk! But since everyone can’t talk, no one can stop talking about it. The Fletchers were enviable in wealth and position, occupying prime waterfront real estate and important in civic and religious places. But being “top” does not protect him, and Ruth describes that it may be the other way around, that “money has been deceived” so that he believes that he is “insulated from danger. … Look what happens if you think that your fortune is guaranteed just because of the breadth. Stupid !”

It is not a spoiler to say that after five days, the ransom was paid to the kidnappers, and Carl was found blindfolded, bound and handcuffed in the bathroom of the Mobil station. The trauma was a “dybbuk” that poisoned Fletcher for decades, not like “Cossacks kill your brothers in front of you.”

The omniscient and opinionated narrator of the novel is unknown, but clearly believes that inherited wealth is corrosive and the Fletcher children – Nathan, Beamer and Jenny – prove it. The Beamer matures into a film writer who leans on his childhood friend Charlie to do most of the work on the screenplays while consuming ginormous amounts of any drug available and seeing a dominatrix once a week behind the back of his wife. After Charlie went solo, Beamer’s spectacular career took off. No schadenfreude here. It was unpleasant to watch him crash and burn, even though Beamer had done everything humanly possible to ensure that outcome.

Nathan, the Fletchers’ eldest son, is the polar opposite of his sister. While Beamer is wild and lascivious, Nathan is always worried, carrying around beta blockers in his pocket for a heart condition that he does not have and would be afraid to treat if he did. His wife, Alyssa, protects her husband’s neurosis but doesn’t realize that he is in a downward spiral, financially and professionally. He quickly became the most responsible of his siblings, and while he wanted to please everyone around him, his tendency to see danger around every corner didn’t please everyone, especially his son, Ari, who was nervous. as his father. There was a rare, wonderful moment, though, when Nathan was calm enough to comfort his son and think, “There are few things more validating than seeing someone like you and loving them instead of hating them. That’s the wonderful thing about being a father.” which Nathan did not anticipate.

Jenny has ironically become a union organizer (her father’s own factory is non-union) after trying on various other identities as a Yale student. For him, not only was “wealth a crippling starting position” but it was also a source of lifelong shame. “What is it about shame,” Brodesser-Akner writes, “that a teaspoon weighs more than a teaspoon of happiness or other harmless emotions? What is it about shame that always feels like the truth?

“Long Island Compromise” is an exploration of intergenerational trauma and a no-nonsense critique of income inequality — Thorstein Veblen’s “Leisure Class Theory” is even invoked — but it’s also very funny. Ruth is not an affectionate mother, but she is like a character from an early Woody Allen movie with her deadpan quips and guilt-provoking Yiddishisms. When Jenny refuses to attend the high school graduation ceremony because “I’m not an animal … I shouldn’t perform,” Ruth replies: “Sarah Bernhardt here!” When one of her children addressed her not as Mom but as Ma, she replied: “Now I’m Ma. Like you were raised on the street. Bugsy Siegel here.

The moment in “Long Island Compromise” that made me cry came late, when Carl, now older, faced his inability to cope with the effects of the kidnapping and thought of forgiving himself for his role in the legacy: “Forgive me? seen around him who had stopped living for his family.… He had tried so hard. He had tried so hard like everyone else.”

I will not say what the first line of the prophetic book, but it hardly matters. Brodesser-Akner has written a human, cheeky, handsome novel whose words dance wildly on the page.

Leigh Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She is director of the Oprah Book Club and book editor for O, Oprah’s Magazine.