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Welcome to the first meeting ofNew Yorks 2024Beach Read Book Club.
Today, were talking about the books prologue and our initial impressions.
Emily Gould:I have to admit that I was dreading reading this book.
I wrotea review ofFleishman Is in Troublethat was against the critical consensus back in the day.
In a way, I think that is good.
It represents artistic growth, which is cool to see in a novelist.
On the other hand, the question of Did that as the schema for the novel ultimately work?
is what I will open with and let other people discuss.
Its very episodic; the characters are introduced in a really TV way.
The images would be better onscreen than they were in the book.
I also think some of the jokes are overexplained and they would be better as a visual.
The Nathan and Alyssa relationship Ive seen that play out.
Ive been friends with this family in college.
Its just something that Im bringing to this book that I want to get out in the open.
Emily:I want to flash my credentials, too.
My grandparents are from Long Island.
At some points, it was an uncomfortable level of caricature.
It just doesnt penetrate beneath that surface caricature sometimes to the full humanity of these people.
This is our lives.
It feels written for suburban Jewish mothers who want to see themselves represented.
I think Jewish people arent represented exactly in this way often; theyre represented in a different stereotypical way.
Julie Kosin:It felt to me likeTheMarvelous Mrs. Maiselfor HBO.
That felt so overdone that I was like,Who are you doing this for?
:It was soBillions.
This is a book that is speaking to TV cliche more than its speaking to book cliche.
J.K.:There were so many cliches in it that were both TV and book.
The whole section about the colors of the kitchens in the intro at first I really loved it.
Weve all seen that My grandmas kitchen was wood panel; that is almost a trope at this point.
But I was like,Okay, whose eye is she writing this from?
Wheres the narrator centered in all of this?And I couldnt figure it out.
I still am not quite sure.
But the center of this book is this horrific event that we havent really even touched on yet.
Then youre watching how long the rot can happen before it actually disrupts the superficial thing.
:The we of it all is really interesting in terms of the narration.
But it doesnt feel necessarily like I could get in on the we.
First thing that came to mind wasGossip Girl.
It also seems implied that maybe the narrator is a jealous neighbor.
:This is facile, but it sounds like a profile writer, right?
:I think its worth getting intothe piece she wrote for theTimes Magazineabout the inspiration for this book.
It was interesting to have that much of a direct correlation to herself in a lot of ways.
This story, actually told from Charlie, thats something interesting.
Meanwhile, I felt like the narrator was super-unwieldy.
:I feel like publishing that piece was sort of cheating.
Certainly an author is allowed to have an opinion about how their book should be read.
But we can still feel that if that, indeed, was her project.
Its like a works cited that forestalls criticism because Look, heres the real person.
You cant be mad about the thing because this was what it was really like, right?
Beamer is in a place where you have to hope no real human is.
J.K.:I hate going into a book being like,They already chose this for a TV show.
I dont want to think about a book as an adaptation.
I want to take it on its own merit.
I think Taffy is areally compelling writer, and I read this in four days.
But at the end, I felt very cold.
:I also thought ofThe Corrections Im sure everyone did, too.
Can someone whos read it more recently do a compare-and-contrast?
:Ruth is Enid.
We dont get to know many details from the now-adult childrens childhoods.
But another difference is that inThe Corrections, theres much more hope.
Ultimately, youre rooting for them in spite of yourself.
And the ways in which they both succeed and fail are what lends that book its enduring interest.
So I did appreciate that Taffy comes straight out with the kidnapping.
There is a certain levity and humor to the beginning.
But we witness too much self-laceration.
I wonder if the book would have succeeded if it were zippier and, like, 200 pages.
I think the ending was too drawn out.
Beach Read Book Clubis moderated byJasmine Vojdani.
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