Lavishly praised by a variety of reviewers, including the New Yorker, The New York Times, Oprah, and The Atlantic, this novel by the staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, is based on a novel kidnapping of a rich descendent of a Jewish immigrant, Zelig Fletcher. I humbly disagree with their assessment.
The plot becomes complex and none of the characters could possibly be considered normal. While the main characters, Carl Fletcher, his wife Ruth, his mother, Phyllis, their three children, Nathan, Beamer, and Jennie, and cousin Marjorie are relatively easy to keep track of, the same cannot be said of the dozens of secondary characters.
The starting point of the family fortune is the theft of a boat pass and documents from a fellow Jew to escape the Nazis. And the factory that is the source of their wealth produces heavily polluting carcinogenic byproducts of styrofoam, with no effort to mitigate this.
The sexual immorality of all of the family members makes a mockery of marriage vows and is described in very foul language. The Slave and Master antics of the psychotic drug-dependent Beamer in particular is described in revolting unnecessary detail, and foul language is not confined to the conversations, but is used liberally by the author as well.
There are a lot of conversations that I found to be unrealistic and stilted. None of the family members ever get along with each other.
I suppose that as a mockery and cynical commentary of rabid capitalism and of the wealthy lifestyle, this book has some merit, but Thorstein Veblem did a far better job of doing that, in The Theory of the Leisure Class, 125 years ago.
The author has not done her homework with respect to medical science adequately. Animal fat does not congeal perceptibly in veins, and the amygdalae are not in the back of the brain.
1.0/5.
Thanks, The New Yorker. But no thanks.
The Passionate Reader 