2.5 Stars
This novel’s epigraph
includes a quote from George W. Bush: “When
I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.” That is a perfect summary of the book; it is
about three young people acting irresponsibly.
Roger Whitby, the
patriarch of a once enormously wealthy family, dies and leaves his diminished fortune
to his 21-year-old son. Nick is his
youngest son, actually a stepson; Roger’s fourth wife was a single mother when
she met Roger. Though Roger has several
other children from his previous three marriages, Nick inherits everything, including
houses currently occupied by these other children.
The book focuses on
three siblings from three of Roger’s marriages.
Nick is unaware of his father’s death because he is a member of an eco-terrorist
group and has to go into hiding after an attack on a biotech lab. Shelley drops out of college and gets a job
as an amanuensis for a blind architect with whom she develops an unhealthy
relationship. Brooke is a nurse who
becomes pregnant but is really in love with a woman. Shelley and Brooke could both lose their
homes to Nick and so are anxious to find him.
None of the three is
likeable. The reader is supposed to feel
sympathy for the three because each was abandoned by Roger; flashbacks are used
to emphasize their feelings of abandonment when Roger left their mothers and
thereafter gave them only sporadic attention:
“But every time he’d shown up had also corresponded with a minor
breakdown in his daily life.” As a
consequence, they are looking for the affection and stability they didn’t have
as children. They also feel burdened by
the expectations placed on them because of their family name: “The Whitbys of the last few generations were
rather afflicted with the sincere and problematic issue of not knowing what the
hell to do.”
Actually, however, the
Whitby name means less and less; in fact, the book opens commenting on
this: “There was a time when the death
of a Whitby would have made the evening post.
Two generations earlier, flags would have been flown at half-mast and
taps played in town squares at dusk. . . . But when Roger Whitby Jr. died half
a century later, there was no such hubbub.”
The name does, however, still carry enough cachet that it gives people a
sense of superiority; one outsider comments on the greatest benefit of being a
Whitby: “you were born knowing you had
worth. This entitlement, randomly
assigned by the universe, was simply not fair.”
Nick, Shelley and Brooke need to overcome any feelings of being
extraordinary and get on with “the beastly process of becoming” their own
persons.
The three are spoiled
rich kids. The author takes pains to
point out that “The rich are no different from the rest; different only,
perhaps, in the inclination to be more outrageous.” However, it seems that the rich take longer
to grow up. (Maybe the title has more than one meaning.) Only at 21 years of age does
Nick realize he must accept responsibility for his decisions and their
consequences: “As he owned up to it all,
he realized that every single action was a result of his own choices. He was responsible for it all”?! They also seem to have little self-control;
all three have anger issues: Nick “was
filled with an anger that teetered on uncontrollable” and “A sense of injustice
began to fill [Shelley] with anger. . . . It simply wasn’t fair” and “Overcome
with anger, [Brooke] dropped to her knees on the wet sand too, exasperated.” Brooke calls Shelley “young and self-absorbed”
but 37-year-old Brooke is not much better.
She is in a panic because she might
actually have to pay rent for the first time in her life?! The truth is that the three have endless
opportunities yet all they do is whine.
I really struggled to
get through the book. It goes on and on
(450+ pages) and I cared less and less about the three protagonists, three poor
rich kids who keep acting irresponsibly and making stupid decisions. The author is the great-granddaughter of Eleanor
Roosevelt and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; her 2014 marriage received
mention in The New York Times. She could very well be writing about her
family, but the portrait of her generation is not flattering.
Note: I received a digital galley of this book from
the publisher via NetGalley.
No comments:
Post a Comment