After the patriarch of the wealthy Fletcher family is kidnapped and then returned for a hefty ransom, everyone tries to forget anything ever happened. But as the decades pass, it becomes clear how the family never really escaped from the terror of that day. The family fortune, generated by the factory founded by their Jewish immigrant forebears, can’t save the Fletchers from themselves – in fact, it often just enables them to be the architects of their own misery. But when the money suddenly vanishes, it becomes apparent that wealth was the glue keeping everything from falling apart. Despite the dark premise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner doesn’t let readers feel too sorry for her cast of characters – often unpleasant and out of touch, they’re both unsympathetic and deeply compelling.
"After the patriarch of the wealthy Fletcher family is kidnapped and then returned for a hefty ransom, everyone tries to forget anything ever happened. But as the decades pass, it becomes clear how the family never really escaped from the terror of that day. The family fortune, generated by the factory founded by their Jewish immigrant forebears, can’t save the Fletchers from themselves – in fact, it often just enables them to be the architects of their own misery. But when the money suddenly vanishes, it becomes apparent that wealth was the glue keeping everything from falling apart. Despite the dark premise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner doesn’t let readers feel too sorry for her cast of characters – often unpleasant and out of touch, they’re both unsympathetic and deeply compelling."
"Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s hit first novel, Fleishman Is In Trouble , was a sprawling, satirical account of the divorce of two Manhattan urbanites. It’s smart, great fun, and was adapted (by Brodesser-Akner) into an Emmy-nominated television series starring Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg. All this is to say that her second novel, Long Island Compromise , has been hotly anticipated on both sides of the Atlantic. It unpicks the long lasting consequences of the 1980s kidnapping of a wealthy businessman, as well as—more broadly—the story of his Jewish-American family and their pursuit of financial and social success. “The family epic is my favorite kind of novel, and, as a magazine writer I have learned there is nothing more revelatory of a person than where that person is from,” Brodesser-Akner told Vanity Fair . “That idea, plus my fascination with Long Island culture—which to me has always been equal parts romantic, criminal and tragic—gave birth to the family at the center of the book, the Fletchers—the kind of family that is wealthy enough for their money to have bought them security, but also to leave them in danger.” Long Island Compromise is a doorstopper of a novel with a huge cast of characters, and seems destined, again, for the bestseller lists. Out July 10."
