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Long Island Compromise: A Novel
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Rosa Sanchez (senior news editor)
Hi @here! This month we read Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. It tells the story of a wealthy Jewish-American family, the Fletchers, whose members are traumatized by the kidnapping of one of their own, and who continue to live with that trauma for generations to come.
I don’t even know where to begin with this one! There’s so much to unpack.
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Izzy Grinspan (digital director)
I have to say, I didn’t love this book as much as her first novel, Fleishman Is in Trouble, but I DO think it’s an excellent book-club book because it offers a lot to discuss.
Rosa Sanchez
This is the first book of hers I’ve read, and I was obsessed with it! It says so much about money and privilege and generational trauma and people’s ideas of love!
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Izzy Grinspan
I listened to Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s episode of Fresh Air, in which she says the book is about the unanswerable question of whether it’s better to be rich and insulated or poor and scrappy. But I think it’s also about a more specific unanswerable question, which is whether the Fletcher kids are messed up because they’re overly protected or because they’re traumatized. Is it the money or the trauma?
The bulk of the book covers the three Fletcher kids having their own life meltdowns. It’s really less about the kidnapping than the aftermath. Did you have a favorite Fletcher? Or a least favorite?
Rosa Sanchez
I think what made me love this book was learning how trauma manifested itself in the different characters. Beamer was a sex and drug and pain addict, Nathan was petrified of living, and Jenny fell asleep at the slightest inconvenience. And while this all stemmed from the kidnapping of their father, Carl, it became a snowball effect where they each inflicted trauma on their own families through they ways they chose to live their lives and to keep themselves from accepting their pain and healing. I was especially drawn to Beamer, just because his personality was so extreme, and his run-on sentences while he was on drugs gave me so much anxiety, lol, but also led me to keep reading.
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Re: the money, it was interesting to me that a lot of the older characters who struggled saw money as the thing that would give them freedom, while some of their children, like Jenny, saw it as something that had always been there, holding her back, not pushing her to do more. Beamer saw it as something he loved, but which had basically led him to do nothing of substance with his life. Nathan was more responsible with his money, but saw it as his duty to support his wife, who had grown up poor.
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So to your question, @Izzy Grinspan, I feel like the trauma and the money went hand in hand with essentially ruining the family, in this case.
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Joel Calfee (editorial and social media assistant)
I think it’s such an interesting perspective, because it plays into this idea that when you grow up with wealth and privilege, you’re not as resilient or scrappy, as Izzy said. This event that people with less privilege might have been able to more easily bounce back from, the Fletcher kids just spiral into and can’t get over.
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And @Rosa Sanchez, I love your point that it’s like an inescapable cycle—people try to build a life for their children to live comfortably, but then it hurts them in the end.
Izzy Grinspan
I do think that’s a little simplistic as an argument, which is one of the things I didn’t love about this book. Resilience in real life is more complicated than that. It might have been good to have one sibling who was actually capable.
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Rosa Sanchez
Yes! Was hoping it would be Jenny, because she was so smart, but then no.
Izzy Grinspan
I wanted more from Jenny! I don’t understand how she just stumbled into a life of union organizing and then stumbled back out of it.
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Rosa Sanchez
Agreed, she seemed like the most lost, in a way. And I think Nathan having a nice family of his own was a nice conclusion, and Jenny and Beamer admiring him for caring for his kids like their parents never cared for them.
Izzy Grinspan
And it seems like he learned how to be a parent from his wife, who had very loving parents who were notably terrible with money. The scene towards the end where Nathan’s wife’s father blesses the kids at their joint bar mitzvah was incredibly moving to me. Finally, here is someone who is able to escape their own self-involvement to do something for the next generation!
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Rosa Sanchez
Yes! Cutting off the line of trauma, finally. That one was also an interesting marriage—they all were. No one seemed to be there only for love; everyone had a darker reason, whether it was Alyssa needing money or Beamer just feeling like he needed someone to keep him calm (Noelle), or even Phyllis and Ruth wanting security.
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Izzy Grinspan
Personally, I think my favorite meltdown was Beamer’s, because it was so funny at the same time that it was tragic. It reminded me a lot of Rachel Fleishman’s breakdown in the author’s previous novel. Taffy is a genius at these kind of manic set pieces. The little details were so good, like when he puts a nicotine patch on his forehead, or the fact that he ends up stalking Mandy Patinkin (who feels like such a surrogate father figure to so many American Jews.)
Rosa Sanchez
That meltdown was hilarious. And I had no idea why Mandy Patinkin was so involved throughout the book, lol.
Did you have thoughts on how religion played a part in their different lives?
Izzy Grinspan
I grew up Reform Jewish, so less religious than a lot of the people in this book (and Taffy herself), but also very much a part of this world, and I think the way she talks about Jewish identity is really compelling. Another thing she said in the Fresh Air interview—I did my homework—is that she didn’t set out to write a Jewish book. She compared it to Jonathan Franzen’s novel Crossroads, which is about a minister and his family falling apart. It’s not a Christian book, it’s a book where Christianity informs the characters’ lives, and this felt similar to me.
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Rosa Sanchez
I see that. It did feel, as an outsider, that I was looking into a very specific community and way of life. All the Bagel Man talk was so funny to me, and also how the mothers didn’t like their kids not marrying Jewish. But also I feel like there was an underlying theme of the kids who grew up rich and privileged not being as interested in their faith as their parents, who had reasons to pray for a better life back in the day. And even Alyssa, who grew up poor and was much more religious than them. I think for me it added to the whole idea that these people became frivolous and no longer had the deep values their parents had when they migrated. But also the bar mitzvahs marked tragic and traumatic events in their lives, so there was also that bad memory attached.
Izzy Grinspan
The whole time I was reading, I was curious about how it would all appear to someone who wasn’t Jewish. And I do think some things about the book are extremely Jewish: the way it uses humor to mitigate tragedy, the question of how one generation’s trauma informs the next.
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Rosa Sanchez
I really enjoyed the humor. And I think anyone who has lived through trauma and come out of it kind of would understand the thought processes of these characters, even if they have nothing in common with you. Nathan’s intrusive thoughts, for example—how he felt so anxious in a silent room he just wanted to, like, strip and dance. That was so funny to me and so real? Jenny I didn’t get.
Also, the one sentence where we learn who kidnapped Carl was so small and nondramatic, it made me think of just how humans and human anxiety will take one small thing and make it snowball to the point where it’s enormous and takes over a life, or many lives. And the fact that after all the tragedies, they find out they still have more money than they’ve ever had and there is no resolution for anyone and they will never not have to be wealthy speaks, I think, to how difficult it is for some people to truly evolve if they’re not at risk of losing something.
Sorry, so many scattered thoughts. The author really gives us a lot to think about.
Izzy Grinspan
@Rosa Sanchez She DID give us a lot to think about, and if I have any complaint about this book, it’s that it felt a little overstuffed to me! The part about Carl’s kidnapper, for example—I get that it was a deliberate choice to reveal that information in one tiny sentence, but it could have been a whole book on its own. This was apparently the first novel she started writing, and I’m sure she’ll come back to some of this stuff in future books (all of which I will buy).
Rosa Sanchez
Same! I definitely recommend this one if you like weird stuff and have a dry sense of humor and the patience to put together every piece. It somehow left me drained and also wanting more from every character.
Izzy Grinspan
Ha, yes, it’s not a relaxing book, lol.
Our Bazaar Book Chat pick for August is Rip Tide: A Novel by Colleen McKeegan. Pick up your copy of the book here, and read along with us.
