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This Beautiful Life
[This is the MP3CD audiobook format.]
O Magazine's Reading Room, August 2011
This Beautiful Life is a powerful exploration of the blurring boundaries of privacy and the fragility of self, a tour de force of modern life that will have listeners debating their assumptions about family, morality, and the sacrifices and choices we make in the name of love.
When the Bergamots move from comfortable suburban Ithaca to New York City, they're not sure how well they will adapt--or what to make of the strange new world of the well-to-do Upper West Side. But soon Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying six-year-old Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is graciously taken in by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private day school.
But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an e-mail waiting in his inbox from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, scared--a jumble of adolescent emotion--he forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend, and the video goes viral. Within hours, it's not only all over the school but all over the city--and all over the Internet.
In the aftermath, Jake is suspended from school, Liz's social standing among the Wildwood moms is challenged, and Richard's job is at risk. Good people faced with bad choices, they decide to fight back. But how? Do they use the very weapons wielded against them--the media and the law? And at what moral and professional cost? How they choose to react, individually and at one another's behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy; they are completely caught off guard by the ramifications of their actions, not only to their marriage, their daughter, their place in the community, but to Jake--the very one they have set out to protect.
O Magazine's Reading Room, August 2011
This Beautiful Life is a powerful exploration of the blurring boundaries of privacy and the fragility of self, a tour de force of modern life that will have listeners debating their assumptions about family, morality, and the sacrifices and choices we make in the name of love.
When the Bergamots move from comfortable suburban Ithaca to New York City, they're not sure how well they will adapt--or what to make of the strange new world of the well-to-do Upper West Side. But soon Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying six-year-old Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is graciously taken in by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private day school.
But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an e-mail waiting in his inbox from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, scared--a jumble of adolescent emotion--he forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend, and the video goes viral. Within hours, it's not only all over the school but all over the city--and all over the Internet.
In the aftermath, Jake is suspended from school, Liz's social standing among the Wildwood moms is challenged, and Richard's job is at risk. Good people faced with bad choices, they decide to fight back. But how? Do they use the very weapons wielded against them--the media and the law? And at what moral and professional cost? How they choose to react, individually and at one another's behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy; they are completely caught off guard by the ramifications of their actions, not only to their marriage, their daughter, their place in the community, but to Jake--the very one they have set out to protect.
MP3 CD
First published August 1, 2011
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About the author
Helen Schulman
18 books123 followersHELEN SCHULMAN is the New York Times best-selling author of six novels, including Come with Me and This Beautiful Life. Schulman has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Sundance, Aspen Words, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.
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March 13, 2025
Living what appears to be an exceptional reality, with financial and career success, access to the good things in life, and a world of hope for the future, the Bergamot family discovers that the royal flush they had been dealt can easily be transformed into, or shown to be, a house of cards.
When 15-year old Jake Bergamot passes on a chance to hook up with an eighth-grader at a party, telling her she is just too young, she tries to show him she is very definitely not too young by sending him an explicit video of herself. Jake foolishly passes the video on to his friends and it goes viral.
Helen Schulman - from The Daily Beast
This Beautiful Life is a beautifully written book about an ugly event. It looks into how a family copes with the exposure to which they are subjected as a result of a bad adolescent decision, the repercussions of their actions on each other, and what the event reveals about the family’s strengths and weaknesses. Does stress form character or reveal it?
Over-achieving dad, Richard, is on the verge of closing a huge real estate deal for a major Manhattan institution when his high-octane career is impacted. Jake’s pretty decent adolescence and sense of self is given a huge blow. Mom, Liz, having moved from a preferred upstate environment because of her husband’s career, must consider what she really wants in life. Even little eight-year-old sister, Coco, is not untouched.
One of the mixed blessings of our age is our profound interconnectedness. It also is a reminder that, in situations both public and private, just because one can does not mean one should. What does it mean to know that every aspect of one’s life can be shaken by such capricious events? How can one have any sense of security in such a world?
This is a fast-paced book. Schulman is very skilled at portraying conversations between family members. All her primary people are believable, if not necessarily sympathetic. She looks into the details of what might happen under the situation this family endures and paints a convincing portrait. She not only shows the workings of a family’s dynamic, but offers a spot-on look at a segment of American society.
There is little need for a literary treasure hunt here, beyond this Daisy wreaking havoc as her literary predecessor had also done. The images Schulman offers, the actions and emotions she depicts are more than sufficient to show how fragile our lives can be in the early 21st century, and how important it is to build solidly.
Review first posted - 2011
UPDATES
7/28/11
Janet Maslin wrote a pretty good review in the July 24, 2011 NY Times
8/4/2011
Mary McGarry Morris wrote a very good review in the Washington Post.
8/6/2011
I just got around to reading the very smart review by Maria Russo from the NY Times Sunday Book Review section.
8/15/11
Here is an interesting take from NPR's Maureen Corrigan.
When 15-year old Jake Bergamot passes on a chance to hook up with an eighth-grader at a party, telling her she is just too young, she tries to show him she is very definitely not too young by sending him an explicit video of herself. Jake foolishly passes the video on to his friends and it goes viral.
Helen Schulman - from The Daily Beast
This Beautiful Life is a beautifully written book about an ugly event. It looks into how a family copes with the exposure to which they are subjected as a result of a bad adolescent decision, the repercussions of their actions on each other, and what the event reveals about the family’s strengths and weaknesses. Does stress form character or reveal it?
Over-achieving dad, Richard, is on the verge of closing a huge real estate deal for a major Manhattan institution when his high-octane career is impacted. Jake’s pretty decent adolescence and sense of self is given a huge blow. Mom, Liz, having moved from a preferred upstate environment because of her husband’s career, must consider what she really wants in life. Even little eight-year-old sister, Coco, is not untouched.
One of the mixed blessings of our age is our profound interconnectedness. It also is a reminder that, in situations both public and private, just because one can does not mean one should. What does it mean to know that every aspect of one’s life can be shaken by such capricious events? How can one have any sense of security in such a world?
This is a fast-paced book. Schulman is very skilled at portraying conversations between family members. All her primary people are believable, if not necessarily sympathetic. She looks into the details of what might happen under the situation this family endures and paints a convincing portrait. She not only shows the workings of a family’s dynamic, but offers a spot-on look at a segment of American society.
There is little need for a literary treasure hunt here, beyond this Daisy wreaking havoc as her literary predecessor had also done. The images Schulman offers, the actions and emotions she depicts are more than sufficient to show how fragile our lives can be in the early 21st century, and how important it is to build solidly.
Review first posted - 2011
UPDATES
7/28/11
Janet Maslin wrote a pretty good review in the July 24, 2011 NY Times
8/4/2011
Mary McGarry Morris wrote a very good review in the Washington Post.
8/6/2011
I just got around to reading the very smart review by Maria Russo from the NY Times Sunday Book Review section.
8/15/11
Here is an interesting take from NPR's Maureen Corrigan.
December 10, 2011
Somebody pour me a drink. I feel like I've survived something here.
First off, let me say that I listened to this on CD going to-and-from work, and the fact that the reader was overwhelmingly droll and snooty certainly tainted my impression of the book. It was very challenging to tolerate her smug and judgmental tone.
The plot centers on an upwardly-mobile New York family of four: Richard, a highly-sought university administrator; his wife, Liz, an initially sensible stay-at-home mom who has set her own PhD-fueled pursuits aside to accommodate her husband's trajectory from Ithaca to New York City; Jake, their 15-year-old private school junior son; and Coco, their precocious (and cloying) adopted six-year-old daughter. Early on, Jake is sent an explicit video via e-mail by a 13-year-old girl whom he had just met and mashed faces with the night before, and then had promptly rejected her further advances. This event drives the plot.
The recorded book reader’s grating tone was a factor in my first impressions of the novel. But her reading became inconsequential upon moving into the second half, not because the reading improved, but rather that the ludicrous character developments and overdone writing overtook all other facets. At times, I became mindful of firmly grabbing the steering wheel with both hands to resist the urge to veer off the road and into a tree.
I valued little in those last 120 pages. Schulman apparently feels compelled to transform the everyday into the most overwrought similes. I found myself playing a game of predicting how often "like" or "as" would surface between stoplights, and laughed out loud at my accuracy. Meanwhile, the older characters almost literally morphed into children; Liz became Lizzie, and teenage son Jake became Jakey. Accompanied by the names of Coco and Daisy, I was bracing myself for the executive father Richard to be suddenly addressed as Ricky. Despite the fact that this development didn't occur, it didn't stop the central couple from descending into juvenile obscenity-laced dialogue and jarring, seemingly unprovoked loathing for each other. Sorry, but I don't believe that real people who have shared a life together, had a child, adopted another, and progressed successfully together through 20 years would so suddenly and inexplicably begin to talk to each other like this.
I agree with some other readers who felt that Schulman wrote the closing pages as if a pressing deadline loomed. As a result, story threads remained unresolved (what of Jake’s infatuation with classmate Audrey, and his relationship with his crew of high school buddies?), while the final scene centers on the previously background character of Daisy, the 13-year-old video producer, fast forwarded into her early 20s. The crumbled marriage of Liz and Richard is telescoped into a handful of pages of summative exposition, and we remain unconvinced of its realism.
It has been a long time since I’ve experienced a novel that has collapsed as this one did, with such unlikable characters, such crass moments, and such an overpopulation of painfully forced figurative language. (But I do walk away unscathed, with the “man-boobs like caged hamsters” simile forever seared in my memory. And I even stayed on the road through that one.)
First off, let me say that I listened to this on CD going to-and-from work, and the fact that the reader was overwhelmingly droll and snooty certainly tainted my impression of the book. It was very challenging to tolerate her smug and judgmental tone.
The plot centers on an upwardly-mobile New York family of four: Richard, a highly-sought university administrator; his wife, Liz, an initially sensible stay-at-home mom who has set her own PhD-fueled pursuits aside to accommodate her husband's trajectory from Ithaca to New York City; Jake, their 15-year-old private school junior son; and Coco, their precocious (and cloying) adopted six-year-old daughter. Early on, Jake is sent an explicit video via e-mail by a 13-year-old girl whom he had just met and mashed faces with the night before, and then had promptly rejected her further advances. This event drives the plot.
The recorded book reader’s grating tone was a factor in my first impressions of the novel. But her reading became inconsequential upon moving into the second half, not because the reading improved, but rather that the ludicrous character developments and overdone writing overtook all other facets. At times, I became mindful of firmly grabbing the steering wheel with both hands to resist the urge to veer off the road and into a tree.
I valued little in those last 120 pages. Schulman apparently feels compelled to transform the everyday into the most overwrought similes. I found myself playing a game of predicting how often "like" or "as" would surface between stoplights, and laughed out loud at my accuracy. Meanwhile, the older characters almost literally morphed into children; Liz became Lizzie, and teenage son Jake became Jakey. Accompanied by the names of Coco and Daisy, I was bracing myself for the executive father Richard to be suddenly addressed as Ricky. Despite the fact that this development didn't occur, it didn't stop the central couple from descending into juvenile obscenity-laced dialogue and jarring, seemingly unprovoked loathing for each other. Sorry, but I don't believe that real people who have shared a life together, had a child, adopted another, and progressed successfully together through 20 years would so suddenly and inexplicably begin to talk to each other like this.
I agree with some other readers who felt that Schulman wrote the closing pages as if a pressing deadline loomed. As a result, story threads remained unresolved (what of Jake’s infatuation with classmate Audrey, and his relationship with his crew of high school buddies?), while the final scene centers on the previously background character of Daisy, the 13-year-old video producer, fast forwarded into her early 20s. The crumbled marriage of Liz and Richard is telescoped into a handful of pages of summative exposition, and we remain unconvinced of its realism.
It has been a long time since I’ve experienced a novel that has collapsed as this one did, with such unlikable characters, such crass moments, and such an overpopulation of painfully forced figurative language. (But I do walk away unscathed, with the “man-boobs like caged hamsters” simile forever seared in my memory. And I even stayed on the road through that one.)
October 26, 2011
I didn't care for this book. I truly despised the first section, from Lizzie's perspective, and only started to like the book a little bit when it was being told from Jake's perspective. I felt like the parents were each quite two-dimensional, and I didn't believe their characters. I was a bit annoyed with the present tense/past tense difference between narrators. It was jarring. I was also disappointed in the writer for her colloquial cop-outs with phrases like, "where they'd lived pretty fucking happily" and "[t]hat was life in Itahaca, and it did not suck." The mention of characters and situations without true development, as in the Feigenbaum blog," the other mother at the party, Marsha, or the interaction with the psychiatrist, was unsatisfying. In fact, almost all of the characters were so under developed that it was almost as though they were thrown in at the last moment without any regard to how they impacted the main characters. Because of the kind of character-centered book that this is, those characters - or at the very least their effect upon the situation or the main characters - needed to have a more well-developed place in the book.
I was disappointed in this book, but I did not like the first book of Schulman's that I read, either. I had suspected at the time that it was due to the subject matter - that of 9/11, but this book reinforces that it was more than simply the topic I didn't like - I didn't like the writing, in that book, either.
I was disappointed in this book, but I did not like the first book of Schulman's that I read, either. I had suspected at the time that it was due to the subject matter - that of 9/11, but this book reinforces that it was more than simply the topic I didn't like - I didn't like the writing, in that book, either.
November 29, 2018
As I recently felt the need to proclaim on Goodreads, I was a big fan of Helen Schulman's novel P.S.—so much so that Schulman joined my exclusive club of Authors I Avoid Out of a Subconscious Fear That Their Later Novels Won't Live Up to Their Earlier Ones. Sure, I bought a copy of her 2011 novel This Beautiful Life, but that doesn't mean I read it—that is, until this month, when I realized that Schulman had a new novel coming out and that I should finally get around to this one.
Alas, I now wish I had gotten to This Beautiful Life much sooner, because everything about it felt stale. For one thing, I'm maxed out on stories of privileged white straight Manhattan couples with their 2.1 kids and lives that look perfect from the outside (spoiler alert: not actually perfect inside). For another, the plot, about a risque video that goes viral, has lost all novelty. By now we all know: Just about anything can go viral, nothing is safe, and it can totally wreck your life. Lives have been wrecked. Yep. What else is on?
Although in this case, no one's life was really that wrecked. Like I said, this book was published in 2011, but oddly, it takes place in 2003, so the aforementioned video went viral in a rather tame way—hardly anyone had any kind of social media back then, so the video just got emailed around a while, and then everyone forgot about it, I guess. In fact, there's very little focus on the reaction of the general public; the book is mostly about the impact the sharing of the video has on the aforementioned privileged white Manhattan couple—their teenage son was the recipient of the risque video and the first person to forward it, you see, and that did have some consequences that made both parents question what the hell they're doing with their lives.
I liked how This Beautiful Life pinpointed the source of a lot of the tension between married couples where the woman stays home with the kids: Having given up her career, she feels like she's sacrificed everything and gets little to no respect; meanwhile, as the breadwinner, he feels like everything is on his shoulders and the family sinks or swims based on whether he makes good decisions. And they're both right! Still, despite this insight at its core, this novel failed to wow me. It's definitely well-written and it held my interest... but it just felt very been there, done that. P.S. was a story I'd never read before, but in many ways This Beautiful Life is a story I've already read countless times.
Alas, I now wish I had gotten to This Beautiful Life much sooner, because everything about it felt stale. For one thing, I'm maxed out on stories of privileged white straight Manhattan couples with their 2.1 kids and lives that look perfect from the outside (spoiler alert: not actually perfect inside). For another, the plot, about a risque video that goes viral, has lost all novelty. By now we all know: Just about anything can go viral, nothing is safe, and it can totally wreck your life. Lives have been wrecked. Yep. What else is on?
Although in this case, no one's life was really that wrecked. Like I said, this book was published in 2011, but oddly, it takes place in 2003, so the aforementioned video went viral in a rather tame way—hardly anyone had any kind of social media back then, so the video just got emailed around a while, and then everyone forgot about it, I guess. In fact, there's very little focus on the reaction of the general public; the book is mostly about the impact the sharing of the video has on the aforementioned privileged white Manhattan couple—their teenage son was the recipient of the risque video and the first person to forward it, you see, and that did have some consequences that made both parents question what the hell they're doing with their lives.
I liked how This Beautiful Life pinpointed the source of a lot of the tension between married couples where the woman stays home with the kids: Having given up her career, she feels like she's sacrificed everything and gets little to no respect; meanwhile, as the breadwinner, he feels like everything is on his shoulders and the family sinks or swims based on whether he makes good decisions. And they're both right! Still, despite this insight at its core, this novel failed to wow me. It's definitely well-written and it held my interest... but it just felt very been there, done that. P.S. was a story I'd never read before, but in many ways This Beautiful Life is a story I've already read countless times.
September 1, 2011
The cover of the NY Times Book Review? Really? Really? Okay, this'll teach me to run out and buy a book based on that kind of coverage. The review was longer than the book. Tho t'aint the length I quibble with, more the "huh? Nothing much happened" factor that irks me. The premise was intriguing and oh-so timely: upper east side (or was it west?) NYC, a family recently transplanted from Ithaca, upstate NY. Teenage boy receives a sex-video from a younger girl with a serious crush on him. Entire family is ripped apart. Brilliant money-making dad, an exec at fictional university (obviously Columbia) loses his job. Adorable adopted Chinese sister, 5 years old, somehow "sees" the video (come on!!) and reenacts it for a few kindergarten chums. The mom...she's our protag..is a really whiny "I don't fit in" type who's never had to make a living ... is shunned by the other "yummy mummies" of upper east (or west?) side. Sorry, this book, while really really well-written (you feel like the author re-worked every sentence to ultimate perfection), was not at all believable and really, could anyone empathize with this family? I will say that the teen boy around whom the plot turns was well done. But nothing happened. And the FRONT page of the NY Times? Sure I'm a bit (okay a lot) jealous, but hello? Nothing happened. Maybe it's me, but I like to be told a story.
April 4, 2012
This book lost me from hello, and whilst at times it made an effort to win me back I never really bought it.
The premise is good one, its what caught my attention, and I was excited to receive an uncorrected proof from Waterstones. Examining the worst challenges a family can face from the relative safety of a book can make for very thought provoking reading. But this is no "We Need to Talk About Kevin."
I felt the main barrier to me connecting with this book was the characters, and the lives they led. Private school, high society, power jobs, spoilt children...there was nothing there that I could relate to, and more than that there was no humility. Possibly this is to show that even family disasters can happen in the "perfect" segment of society...but that isn't how it translates to paper. That side of it left me cold, it reminded me of a certain strain of chick-lit that has never attracted me. The characters came across as contrived and thoroughly dislikeable. As a result, I didn't care what happened to any of them - in my mind they all deserved a poor outcome.
Basically, this book failed to move me in the way I had hoped it would. Its probably more suited to women who are outgrowing chick-lit, venturing into something with a bit more meat but who need the security blanket of that genre.
The premise is good one, its what caught my attention, and I was excited to receive an uncorrected proof from Waterstones. Examining the worst challenges a family can face from the relative safety of a book can make for very thought provoking reading. But this is no "We Need to Talk About Kevin."
I felt the main barrier to me connecting with this book was the characters, and the lives they led. Private school, high society, power jobs, spoilt children...there was nothing there that I could relate to, and more than that there was no humility. Possibly this is to show that even family disasters can happen in the "perfect" segment of society...but that isn't how it translates to paper. That side of it left me cold, it reminded me of a certain strain of chick-lit that has never attracted me. The characters came across as contrived and thoroughly dislikeable. As a result, I didn't care what happened to any of them - in my mind they all deserved a poor outcome.
Basically, this book failed to move me in the way I had hoped it would. Its probably more suited to women who are outgrowing chick-lit, venturing into something with a bit more meat but who need the security blanket of that genre.
August 11, 2011
This book wasn't sure exactly what story it wanted to tell. The blurb on the cover says the book is about what happens to a family when the teenage son gets caught up in an sex email scandel. But this is done in a very basic way and I didn't ever really feel for anyone in this book. The characters seem to be standing and stating who they are and how they feel, without the reader ever really feeling that or seeing it. This could have been such a great book, but I felt the author just didn't know how to communicate. For example, the mom...she loves her son. I love how she admits she loves him too much. I can relate to this. However, it just never digs any deeper. Yeah, she protects him, but there could have been so much more to this. You can see that the author wants to talk about how this affects her marriage, but just never really gets there except for one fight where the husband says, "we've made him weak. you've made him weak". And speaking of the husband, Richard...we get a very cardboard view of him. There are hints that he has issues, but they really don't get played out very well. Anyway, I just could see this book being so much better than it actually turned out to be.
August 21, 2012
I just finished this book and absolutely despised it. I thought the subject matter was OK, if a bit overdone, but what really annoyed me is Helen Schulman's writing. It's simply not good. I hated every stock character, especially Lizzie and Richard, and I had a hard time believing a kindergartener (no matter how precocious) would say "it's awfully ...."
And that's just one completely unbelievable thing characters say in this book. Even tiny things annoyed me, like having a food server at a lobster-roll place call a distracted woman "lady" - that just doesn't happen. I hate when writers make cab drivers and other "help" refer to women as "lady." I've lived in NYC my whole life and nobody has ever called me that. It's so unrealistic.
The parts about the Feigenbaum blog was a cop-out - wow, way to spell out that Liz is bored and engages in "illicit" online activities, too. And why did the fact that she got drunk the night of Jake's party matter? He wasn't trying to call her. It was all just so absurd.
And after the big video surfaces, literally nothing happens. We get no perspective from anyone, and then it's over.
I DO NOT recommend this book for anyone looking for well-written literary fiction.
And that's just one completely unbelievable thing characters say in this book. Even tiny things annoyed me, like having a food server at a lobster-roll place call a distracted woman "lady" - that just doesn't happen. I hate when writers make cab drivers and other "help" refer to women as "lady." I've lived in NYC my whole life and nobody has ever called me that. It's so unrealistic.
The parts about the Feigenbaum blog was a cop-out - wow, way to spell out that Liz is bored and engages in "illicit" online activities, too. And why did the fact that she got drunk the night of Jake's party matter? He wasn't trying to call her. It was all just so absurd.
And after the big video surfaces, literally nothing happens. We get no perspective from anyone, and then it's over.
I DO NOT recommend this book for anyone looking for well-written literary fiction.
July 4, 2011
I have good news, and I have bad news. But first a (very little) bit about the story.
A young girl appears naked on the Internet. A boy notices, and in some state of discombobulation, he passes the link on to a friend. Of course the girl goes locally viral, and the first boy gets in trouble. He eventually gets out of trouble due to one of his parents, who has a friend who has a friend. This whole mess happens amid a Chardonnay–and-Hummer-in-the-‘burbs family who curse a lot, drink too much, value image over substance…and on and on.
The good news is the author is a sporadically decent writer, who has obviously spent a good bit of time assaying this American subculture. The ideas behind her novel are contemporary and occasionally captivating. She toys with the idea of confidentiality lost in the digital age. She whizzes past a mention of the movie The Matrix, in which she sees the movie’s hero, Neo, as someone breaking out of the banality of her characters’ oh-so-nice lifestyle, in which Neo “discovered the true nature of the world and mastered it.”
The bad news, I’m afraid, is that her characters simply aren’t up to any sort of alchemy that will make substantial gold of the concocted story’s lead. And, it seems, her characters even drag down the author’s writing:
“Hello,” says Richard.
“Richard,” says the voice.
“Strauss?” says Richard.
“Scott Levine. How are you?”
There are switches into present tense, which may seem agile writing, but such leaps seem to be to no technical or literary purpose. And at times, the author seems to lose whatever intimacy she has with her characters – to the point that she sneers at them.
I suspect the author is writing with an editor’s or an agent’s advice for a book club market of the, well, Chardonnay-and-Hummer…etc. crowd. In the end, there’s nothing to really resolve here, nor anything to trouble readers who might feel the banality of Neo’s situation, but without the moxie to transform it into anything real.
A young girl appears naked on the Internet. A boy notices, and in some state of discombobulation, he passes the link on to a friend. Of course the girl goes locally viral, and the first boy gets in trouble. He eventually gets out of trouble due to one of his parents, who has a friend who has a friend. This whole mess happens amid a Chardonnay–and-Hummer-in-the-‘burbs family who curse a lot, drink too much, value image over substance…and on and on.
The good news is the author is a sporadically decent writer, who has obviously spent a good bit of time assaying this American subculture. The ideas behind her novel are contemporary and occasionally captivating. She toys with the idea of confidentiality lost in the digital age. She whizzes past a mention of the movie The Matrix, in which she sees the movie’s hero, Neo, as someone breaking out of the banality of her characters’ oh-so-nice lifestyle, in which Neo “discovered the true nature of the world and mastered it.”
The bad news, I’m afraid, is that her characters simply aren’t up to any sort of alchemy that will make substantial gold of the concocted story’s lead. And, it seems, her characters even drag down the author’s writing:
“Hello,” says Richard.
“Richard,” says the voice.
“Strauss?” says Richard.
“Scott Levine. How are you?”
There are switches into present tense, which may seem agile writing, but such leaps seem to be to no technical or literary purpose. And at times, the author seems to lose whatever intimacy she has with her characters – to the point that she sneers at them.
I suspect the author is writing with an editor’s or an agent’s advice for a book club market of the, well, Chardonnay-and-Hummer…etc. crowd. In the end, there’s nothing to really resolve here, nor anything to trouble readers who might feel the banality of Neo’s situation, but without the moxie to transform it into anything real.
October 7, 2011
Okay so I finished this book a couple of days ago and am still thinking about it. Mainly I think of my niece who is nearly Daisy's age and shudder to think that she could be naive enough to record a very explicit video of herself and forward it to an older boy in the hopes of impressing him. God how awful, and mainly because I actually think she might do it. But what is more disturbing is I get that hideous apprehension because I see her with her friends, trying so hard to be grown up, she idolises all the wrong people.
When she was 8 her dance class did a performance to "Dont You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me" and I was MORTIFIED (and I am no prude), yet their parents weren't - how can that be? Are their mothers so used to seeing their little girls act like pole dancers that they just go along with it? I was at the rehearsal and I was the one who asked the question "are you really sure this is the appropriate song?", to which the answer was, "the girls love it, it is just a dance". To me it was so much more and I am still dumbfounded that none of them could see it or were to scared to say something incase they rock the boat.
This book is very confronting reading, the video is just plain shocking, but it is very contemporary. This is social networking these days. All parents should read it and learn from it. I found it very interesting how Daisy's life was affected by it (think Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian) when compared to how Jake (the recipient) was. All the characters have aspects that are unsympathetic in some ways, yet they do convince you of their love, selfishness, ambitions and insecurities. This would make a great book club choice.
When she was 8 her dance class did a performance to "Dont You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me" and I was MORTIFIED (and I am no prude), yet their parents weren't - how can that be? Are their mothers so used to seeing their little girls act like pole dancers that they just go along with it? I was at the rehearsal and I was the one who asked the question "are you really sure this is the appropriate song?", to which the answer was, "the girls love it, it is just a dance". To me it was so much more and I am still dumbfounded that none of them could see it or were to scared to say something incase they rock the boat.
This book is very confronting reading, the video is just plain shocking, but it is very contemporary. This is social networking these days. All parents should read it and learn from it. I found it very interesting how Daisy's life was affected by it (think Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian) when compared to how Jake (the recipient) was. All the characters have aspects that are unsympathetic in some ways, yet they do convince you of their love, selfishness, ambitions and insecurities. This would make a great book club choice.
August 11, 2011
Once I had the online world betray me. Well, it wasn't the online world, it was what someone else did with it. Wait. Make that twice. I had my identity stolen through a phishing scam. That was painful. But more personal and ruthless was the former student who cut and pasted and edited an email I sent to her and forwarded it to my boss at the university. I had invited her to a private workshop, but from how it appeared to my boss, I was poaching students. She did this because I was too ill from a surgery and subsequent infection to write her a letter of recommendation and send it to 15 colleges. When I said "No," she got even.
Anyway. So I get the fact that what we do online can come back and haunt us. Maybe, according to this story, forever and irrevocably ruin or change or twist our lives. This story is very timely and scary for parents, and in many ways, it serves as a morality tale. I liked the characters (except Richard) and found them human. The ending was a clump, not allowing me to truly see how this incident fully wrought its terror. And the surprising but interesting POV at the end was, again, problematic. I SO get the desire to let other, important character speak, but I do believe we need to lock them up in little rooms and throw away the key.
Schulman is a marvelous writer, and she especially gets to the core of women's lives. This story needed maybe 30 more pages and an axe at the end, but a good read.
Anyway. So I get the fact that what we do online can come back and haunt us. Maybe, according to this story, forever and irrevocably ruin or change or twist our lives. This story is very timely and scary for parents, and in many ways, it serves as a morality tale. I liked the characters (except Richard) and found them human. The ending was a clump, not allowing me to truly see how this incident fully wrought its terror. And the surprising but interesting POV at the end was, again, problematic. I SO get the desire to let other, important character speak, but I do believe we need to lock them up in little rooms and throw away the key.
Schulman is a marvelous writer, and she especially gets to the core of women's lives. This story needed maybe 30 more pages and an axe at the end, but a good read.
September 7, 2011
I received this book as a First Read from Goodreads.
I couldn't wait to be finished with this book. Start to finish, I was distracted by the writing itself. Though it was not poorly-constructed, many of her most interesting phrases and sentences read as if she had come up with them before writing the book and then looked eagerly for places where she could include them.
The characters were not terribly relatable. Though their lives are very different from my own, that should not have been enough to make them such a mystery. Yet I couldn't understand half the decisions they made and didn't particularly like any of them.
The subject matter - a teenager's poor judgment call magnified a thousandfold by technology - had the potential to be very interesting, but by the end I just didn't care. It was poorly constructed and hard to follow.
The final chapter, rather than tying up loose ends or even leaving me with questions to ponder, just made me roll my eyes. I was thrilled it was over.
I couldn't wait to be finished with this book. Start to finish, I was distracted by the writing itself. Though it was not poorly-constructed, many of her most interesting phrases and sentences read as if she had come up with them before writing the book and then looked eagerly for places where she could include them.
The characters were not terribly relatable. Though their lives are very different from my own, that should not have been enough to make them such a mystery. Yet I couldn't understand half the decisions they made and didn't particularly like any of them.
The subject matter - a teenager's poor judgment call magnified a thousandfold by technology - had the potential to be very interesting, but by the end I just didn't care. It was poorly constructed and hard to follow.
The final chapter, rather than tying up loose ends or even leaving me with questions to ponder, just made me roll my eyes. I was thrilled it was over.
Read
July 25, 2011My take: I thought this would be like Therese Fowler's http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99... which I found voyeuristically captivating. Because, as I mentioned in my review, I know a boy who had a nearly identical experience. I have also been up close and personal as a family member had a similar experience. So I feel empathetic for the boy who does something stupid and seemingly harmless only to find himself handcuffed and charged with a serious sex crime and facing years of prison time.
This book is on a slightly different vein and covers a little different aspect.
Liz and Richard relocate to New York City from Ithaca for a job opportunity and to a place where their two children, Jake and Coco could have superior educational opportunities. They run in elitist circles and Liz feels like a fish out of water. Regardless, Liz and Coco attend an extravagant party that includes a sleepover while Jake has plans for a party someplace else.
Jake and his friends eventually land at the home of a 13 year old girl whose parents are out of town and she provides the booze and the extravagant house. She hooks onto Jake who makes out with her in a drunken haze. When pushed to take it upstairs to her bedroom, he realizes he's being an idiot and she's only a child (he is 2 years older at 15 and half) and he needs to get out of there. In frustration and reaction to his friends' pressure to sleep with her, he angrily tells her, "You're too young for me!" then gets the crud out Dodge.
The following morning Jake is greeted with an email with an attachment. Daisy, the 13 year old girl, dance provocatively on the video, flashes her breasts, flips up her skirt then does a sexual act too disgusting to detail and, I'll go ahead and admit that I didn't get it until page 151.
Jake, freaked out and not knowing what to do, forwards it to a friend for guidance. He tells two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on. In other words, it goes viral. Just in case you don't know, having pornographic images of any sort on your computer or cell phone or i-pod is illegal. Forwarding it to anybody at all is a criminal act of disseminating child pornography.
The story is about the fall-out and collateral damage. Each character is very well developed and their point of view different from one another. There is no question who is at the helm in the story when it's their head you're in.
Richard is a well accomplished do-gooder. He has a Ph.D. in some kind of organizing service projects. At the moment, he is in the most delicate of negotiations with a myriad of parties to further expand the university where he works. He has prepared astutely and has finally organized all interested parties to sit down for a discussion which is really his presentation. The truth is that Richard begins as one type of person and evolves into a different person with different goals. Did I see evolves? I mean devolves. This is a book about collateral damage.
Lizzie is the most interesting to me. Highly educated with a Ph.D. in art, she turned down a professorship at Harvard in order to support her husband's career and raise Jake and Coco. Coco is adopted from China although I didn't see the relevance to that aspect. She is in midlife and hitting all those midlife developmental milestones (which are different from their male counterparts of affairs with surgically enhanced women, orange tans and a sports car). She is questioning her worth as a person who piece meals her days with tasks that need to be done. She is highly neurotic and endearing to me for that personality trait alone. Okay, and the highly educated. Her job is trying to hold the family together and handling all of the crises that erupt while her powerful husband brings home the bacon.
Coco can only be described as spoiled and precocious. 6 years old, it is through her character we learn how the elite women of this social circle live and exist. How gossip begins and spreads, and how a mother can feel like an utter failure with depression issues.
Jake is a main character. He suffers right from the beginning. He is sickened by what nearly happened at Daisy's house then continues to suffer the consequences of being stupid. His character is heartbreaking as he internally struggles with how much he deserves to be punished. He is damaged forevermore and carries the guilt and shame. He is hated and admired at the school until he is kicked out.
There are other characters that are minor but the damage to their careers and futures are devastating and very well thought-out. Realistically speaking, this could happen.
In good conscience, I can not complete this review without warning of the extensive sexual content. Language is laden with sexual innuendo and/or description and not the sexual acts normally reserved for two people in love. Married sex is also discussed and much more comfortable for me but I can't even detail the different sexual acts and thoughts described without blushing.
This is not a book to be read by the prudish or squeamish. I am not ashamed to admit that I am both. The story concept is one I believe should be addressed. The author is masterful at giving a human face to not only the alleged perpetrator but also the alleged victim. She is also amazing at writing characters I can relate to.
On the other hand, I think I threw up just a little bit in mouth.
Language: Strong
Sex: Extreme
Violence: mild/moderate
This book is on a slightly different vein and covers a little different aspect.
Liz and Richard relocate to New York City from Ithaca for a job opportunity and to a place where their two children, Jake and Coco could have superior educational opportunities. They run in elitist circles and Liz feels like a fish out of water. Regardless, Liz and Coco attend an extravagant party that includes a sleepover while Jake has plans for a party someplace else.
Jake and his friends eventually land at the home of a 13 year old girl whose parents are out of town and she provides the booze and the extravagant house. She hooks onto Jake who makes out with her in a drunken haze. When pushed to take it upstairs to her bedroom, he realizes he's being an idiot and she's only a child (he is 2 years older at 15 and half) and he needs to get out of there. In frustration and reaction to his friends' pressure to sleep with her, he angrily tells her, "You're too young for me!" then gets the crud out Dodge.
The following morning Jake is greeted with an email with an attachment. Daisy, the 13 year old girl, dance provocatively on the video, flashes her breasts, flips up her skirt then does a sexual act too disgusting to detail and, I'll go ahead and admit that I didn't get it until page 151.
Jake, freaked out and not knowing what to do, forwards it to a friend for guidance. He tells two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on. In other words, it goes viral. Just in case you don't know, having pornographic images of any sort on your computer or cell phone or i-pod is illegal. Forwarding it to anybody at all is a criminal act of disseminating child pornography.
The story is about the fall-out and collateral damage. Each character is very well developed and their point of view different from one another. There is no question who is at the helm in the story when it's their head you're in.
Richard is a well accomplished do-gooder. He has a Ph.D. in some kind of organizing service projects. At the moment, he is in the most delicate of negotiations with a myriad of parties to further expand the university where he works. He has prepared astutely and has finally organized all interested parties to sit down for a discussion which is really his presentation. The truth is that Richard begins as one type of person and evolves into a different person with different goals. Did I see evolves? I mean devolves. This is a book about collateral damage.
Lizzie is the most interesting to me. Highly educated with a Ph.D. in art, she turned down a professorship at Harvard in order to support her husband's career and raise Jake and Coco. Coco is adopted from China although I didn't see the relevance to that aspect. She is in midlife and hitting all those midlife developmental milestones (which are different from their male counterparts of affairs with surgically enhanced women, orange tans and a sports car). She is questioning her worth as a person who piece meals her days with tasks that need to be done. She is highly neurotic and endearing to me for that personality trait alone. Okay, and the highly educated. Her job is trying to hold the family together and handling all of the crises that erupt while her powerful husband brings home the bacon.
Coco can only be described as spoiled and precocious. 6 years old, it is through her character we learn how the elite women of this social circle live and exist. How gossip begins and spreads, and how a mother can feel like an utter failure with depression issues.
Jake is a main character. He suffers right from the beginning. He is sickened by what nearly happened at Daisy's house then continues to suffer the consequences of being stupid. His character is heartbreaking as he internally struggles with how much he deserves to be punished. He is damaged forevermore and carries the guilt and shame. He is hated and admired at the school until he is kicked out.
There are other characters that are minor but the damage to their careers and futures are devastating and very well thought-out. Realistically speaking, this could happen.
In good conscience, I can not complete this review without warning of the extensive sexual content. Language is laden with sexual innuendo and/or description and not the sexual acts normally reserved for two people in love. Married sex is also discussed and much more comfortable for me but I can't even detail the different sexual acts and thoughts described without blushing.
This is not a book to be read by the prudish or squeamish. I am not ashamed to admit that I am both. The story concept is one I believe should be addressed. The author is masterful at giving a human face to not only the alleged perpetrator but also the alleged victim. She is also amazing at writing characters I can relate to.
On the other hand, I think I threw up just a little bit in mouth.
Language: Strong
Sex: Extreme
Violence: mild/moderate
December 1, 2011
Helen Schulman is a wonderful writer, with a powerful sense of place and ear for how people talk. Her book, Day at the Beach, is one of the best out dealing with 9/11 (albeit obliquely). And in This Beautiful Life she creates an eerie sense of deja vu in her depiction of a fragilely happy Manhattan family, privileged with success, love, money, "self-fulfillment"-all of which turns out to be a delicately put together life, shattered at any serious encounter with life, in this case, the 15-year-old son, Jake's, forwarding of a sexually explicit video from an infatuated 13 year old which goes viral humiliating the boy, the girl, and the families involved.
The girl's name is Daisy, an allusion to the Daisy Buchanan of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Like the Buchanan's, the Bergamots-Jake, his parents Liz and Richard, and his 6 year old sister Coco, adopted from China-are careless of each other and themselves. And yet, they try, all of them (except little Coco)to love, to please each other. They have values. They care. And so there seems to be a question about whether or not it is possible to create a happy family in today's world. Not just this family but any family. Everyone is hyper aware-aware of their failings, their assets, aware of everyone around them, what they think, what they imagine they are thought of.
So much awareness. And with the Internet, so much of their life and thought on the edge-or over it-of being public.
And in a curious way, all this hyper awareness and glass bowl existence creates a new kind of claustrophobia, a claustrophobia which is large enough to encompass the whole world, a claustrophobia in which the entire world becomes a closet and there is no escape.
And for Schulman, the ultimate showcase of this brave new world is located in New York City, is perhaps the affluent, privileged members of New York City's private school/art/academic/banking world.
All of which made this book, as beautifully written as it is, profoundly depressing. And in the end limited its vision.
As would seem appropriate in a portrayal of claustrophobia.
I read the book in several hours-it is compulsively readable. If you come from the city, if you have met (or are) any of these people, this book may feel more painfully real than if you don't. I can't imagine how this book sounds to a non-New Yorker. The distance may make it more philosophically interesting and less painfully personal.
On the other hand, it may not ring home quite as powerfully to those of us she writes about.
The girl's name is Daisy, an allusion to the Daisy Buchanan of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Like the Buchanan's, the Bergamots-Jake, his parents Liz and Richard, and his 6 year old sister Coco, adopted from China-are careless of each other and themselves. And yet, they try, all of them (except little Coco)to love, to please each other. They have values. They care. And so there seems to be a question about whether or not it is possible to create a happy family in today's world. Not just this family but any family. Everyone is hyper aware-aware of their failings, their assets, aware of everyone around them, what they think, what they imagine they are thought of.
So much awareness. And with the Internet, so much of their life and thought on the edge-or over it-of being public.
And in a curious way, all this hyper awareness and glass bowl existence creates a new kind of claustrophobia, a claustrophobia which is large enough to encompass the whole world, a claustrophobia in which the entire world becomes a closet and there is no escape.
And for Schulman, the ultimate showcase of this brave new world is located in New York City, is perhaps the affluent, privileged members of New York City's private school/art/academic/banking world.
All of which made this book, as beautifully written as it is, profoundly depressing. And in the end limited its vision.
As would seem appropriate in a portrayal of claustrophobia.
I read the book in several hours-it is compulsively readable. If you come from the city, if you have met (or are) any of these people, this book may feel more painfully real than if you don't. I can't imagine how this book sounds to a non-New Yorker. The distance may make it more philosophically interesting and less painfully personal.
On the other hand, it may not ring home quite as powerfully to those of us she writes about.
December 6, 2012
A beautifully descriptive writer - the details of her settings and characters feelings made the story more immediate and real to me. An upwardly mobile family is adjusting to life in Manhattan where Richard is pursuing his new executive planning position with a New York university when their 15 year-old son, Jake, receives a raunchy video email from a 13 year-old admirer that he unthinkly forwards to a friend. Within a day the video has gone viral, widely circulated across the internet and Jake is in trouble. As Jake and the Bergamot family try to deal with the ensuing unfavorable publicity, the family starts to unravel under the stress, especially revealing differences in life goals, personalities, and family and life styles between father Richard and mother Liz that undermine their ability to support each other and their family.
There are references to The Great Gatsby - Jake, like Jay Gatsby, is undone by a Daisy. While both Daisyes are rather self-absorbed, Gatsby is the victim of his obsession with his Daisy while Jake in many ways is ultimately the victim of his Daisy's affections. In both novels, however, the American dream of monetary success as the precursor for happiness in life and love, is ultimately undone.
I was drawn in - awed and appalled at how one lone stupid action, in an age where the internet can make every mistake universal overnight, could have such wide-spread and long-lasting repercussions; and at how easily a seemingly content family can be undone - how thin is the veneer of familial happiness.
There are references to The Great Gatsby - Jake, like Jay Gatsby, is undone by a Daisy. While both Daisyes are rather self-absorbed, Gatsby is the victim of his obsession with his Daisy while Jake in many ways is ultimately the victim of his Daisy's affections. In both novels, however, the American dream of monetary success as the precursor for happiness in life and love, is ultimately undone.
I was drawn in - awed and appalled at how one lone stupid action, in an age where the internet can make every mistake universal overnight, could have such wide-spread and long-lasting repercussions; and at how easily a seemingly content family can be undone - how thin is the veneer of familial happiness.
October 4, 2011
Less skilled writers sometimes feel compelled to use sensational violence or wartime conflicts in the hopes that this will make them serious writers. But here Helen Schulman demonstates that an extremely talented author can make simple things, like dropping off your daughter to school, or your son forwarding an inappropriate e-mail, into fascinating, engrossing fiction. I expecially liked how the fallout from that inappropriate e-mail exposed the structure of how their family was supposed to work-- the wife sacrificing her career to raise children, the husband feeling that it is his responsibility to jump in and save everyone. It was fascinating to watch as the crisis shakes and perhaps destroys this dynamic. It is told in turn from the mother, the son, and the husband, and all pov's are fascinating, beautifully written. (Although the my least favroite was the husband.) Anyone who has spent time in Manhattan (and at Columbia in particular, where the husband is overseeing an expansion into Manhattanville) will laugh at the social structures illuminated here-- the wealthy, priveleged students trying to inherit their parent's success. I haven't read her other work (yet), but I think she's my new hero, up there with Jennifer Egan. Oh, and I think this book might be appropriate for those less interested in violence/sex/language and more about how relationships work within families. There are, however, two brief sexual encounters in the book.
August 20, 2011
I liked the way that the author gently satirized the milieu of this novel--the New York parents and their private school kids. I laughed with recognition at the absurdities of their lives, but I thought she did a nice job of skewering it all rather lovingly. Two adopted Chinese girls in the same kindergarten class, both named Coco, both of whose parents wanted to make sure they were the only one with that name... The slumber party at the Plaza, where a woman sees the way the establishment has gone to ruin... Unlike some of the reviewers here, I liked Liz and Jake (the son who forwards the sex video). My main problem with the novel was that the entirety of the plot as written seems like it should have been the first 50% of the plot. A lot of the way in which their lives fall apart as a result of his impulsive action happens in summary, and with the characters in their heads and in isolation from each other. There isn't really another dramatic incident following that forwarding. Ok--the little girl does a sexy dance. I can't view that as evidence that their world is crumbling. I feel like this is really a novel about a woman coming to realize that she isn't happy with the choices she's made (to give her personal life up to help create the "beautiful" family life of the title). The sex tape episode leads her to this realization, but it's more catalyst than subject.
August 15, 2011
The reviewer from The Washington Post called the events in this book "a modern day viral nightmare", with the contagion being the internet, no lethal germ. I couldn't agree more. A simple, thoughtless mistake by a shocked 15 year old boy--sharing a mind-blowing,sexually explicit video sent to him by a younger girl from school who had a crush on him with his best friend--started a storm that altered countless lives. The stacked cards on the cover of the book are apt--that one click on "forward" brought the house of cards that the Bergamot family had created for itself crashing down. There was already trouble in the family: hidden resentments, frustrations, lack of communication, etc,; the spotlight of this high school sex scandal shone a very bright beam on all of it and more. This book has a very grim subject, terrifying in how easily it could happen to anyone's family, and offers three very detailed character studies that bring to the forefront the fact that while they are going through this excruciating episode together, they are all very, very much isolated and deeply alone.
August 5, 2011
This book was a disappointment to me. The premise of the novel is very topical; a young girl sends a sexual video of herself to a boy whom she likes, and this boy thoughtlessly sends it to one friend, and soon it is sent to people near and far. The main characters are the boy, his parents and younger sister; they have recently relocated to Manhattan because the dad has obtained a high powered job in a local university. The portrayal of the affluent life of the families who are part of the social circle is depressing, and although I really wanted to feel sympathy for the parents and the boy who is the unwilling recipient of this girl's infatuation, I really could not empathize with them. The issue is very important, and the news is filled with the repercussions of internet "sexting" and e mail, which is why I thought I would be interested in this book. I just did not like this author's style, and I rushed through it just to see how it ended. I wasn't really satisfied with the ending...too many loose details....Only a fair read for me.
August 8, 2011
I was able to relate to the characters in Helen Schulman's shattering novel, This Beautiful Life. Liz and Richard Bergamot lived in upstate New York, Ithaca, about 30 minutes from where I lived for 45 years. Richard got a fabulous offer for a job in Manhattan, doing work that he found meaningful and rewarding. The family moved to Manhattan.
Fours years ago, my husband also received a job offer, doing something meaningful and rewarding, and off we went. Unlike Liz and Richard, our children were grown and off to college, so we did not have to uproot them and raise them in Manhattan.
Jake is their 15 year-old-son, who had to leave the suburban beauty of Ithaca and navigate the urban center of Manhattan. Coco, their adopted Chinese daughter, took to Manhattan and all its charms like a duck to water. She was popular with all the "right" girls at school, and got invited to every fancy party.
Liz transitioned from working part-time teaching art at the university in Ithaca to being one of the "ladies who lunch". Richard was consumed by his job, and I loved how Liz described him as "exuding competence. He was a self-cleaning oven. And even after all these years, Liz was not immune to the power of his good looks."
The description of parenting of these children of privilege hits close to home for many parents today.
"they are both too close to their children and too far away from the ground. They are too accomplished. They have accumulated too much. They expect too much. They demand too much. They even love their kids too much. This love is crippling in its own way."
Jake receives a video from a very young girl he met at a party. It is a pornographic video she made of herself. He doesn't know what to do, and he sends it to his friend to get his opinion. His friend passes it on, and soon it has become viral; the whole world sees it.
The life that the Bergamots have is turned upside down. Jake is suspended from his private school, and he may be prosecuted for distributing child pornography. Richard's boss forces him to lay low from his very public position because the story is all over the tabloids and they can't afford the bad publicity.
Liz withdraws into her own world, refusing to get out bed most days, glued to her laptop computer. She watches the video of the girl endlessly, and that leads her to other pornography that she can't stop watching.
Watching the family fall apart is devastating, and Schulman makes these characters so real that you ache for them. Reading it makes you think "there but for the grace of God and one bad decision go I". As parents we try to teach our children to make good decisions, and we hope that when they eventually do make a bad decision, as they all will, that it is one they can come back from.
But in today's plugged-in world, where the click of a mouse can change one's life, making a bad decision can be life-altering. Jake is a good kid, he never would have sent that video out into the world to hurt the young girl, yet that is what happened and it nearly destroys his family.
I cried a few times reading this novel, no more so than when Jake tells his dad that he screwed up again, and Richard says, "I'm your father. I'm always on your side." This is a good family, and how they try to live with what happened is something every parent can relate to, although we hope to never be tested as the Bergamots were.
This book takes you on an emotional, heart-rending journey, one that will make you think about the fragility of the life you have.
Fours years ago, my husband also received a job offer, doing something meaningful and rewarding, and off we went. Unlike Liz and Richard, our children were grown and off to college, so we did not have to uproot them and raise them in Manhattan.
Jake is their 15 year-old-son, who had to leave the suburban beauty of Ithaca and navigate the urban center of Manhattan. Coco, their adopted Chinese daughter, took to Manhattan and all its charms like a duck to water. She was popular with all the "right" girls at school, and got invited to every fancy party.
Liz transitioned from working part-time teaching art at the university in Ithaca to being one of the "ladies who lunch". Richard was consumed by his job, and I loved how Liz described him as "exuding competence. He was a self-cleaning oven. And even after all these years, Liz was not immune to the power of his good looks."
The description of parenting of these children of privilege hits close to home for many parents today.
"they are both too close to their children and too far away from the ground. They are too accomplished. They have accumulated too much. They expect too much. They demand too much. They even love their kids too much. This love is crippling in its own way."
Jake receives a video from a very young girl he met at a party. It is a pornographic video she made of herself. He doesn't know what to do, and he sends it to his friend to get his opinion. His friend passes it on, and soon it has become viral; the whole world sees it.
The life that the Bergamots have is turned upside down. Jake is suspended from his private school, and he may be prosecuted for distributing child pornography. Richard's boss forces him to lay low from his very public position because the story is all over the tabloids and they can't afford the bad publicity.
Liz withdraws into her own world, refusing to get out bed most days, glued to her laptop computer. She watches the video of the girl endlessly, and that leads her to other pornography that she can't stop watching.
Watching the family fall apart is devastating, and Schulman makes these characters so real that you ache for them. Reading it makes you think "there but for the grace of God and one bad decision go I". As parents we try to teach our children to make good decisions, and we hope that when they eventually do make a bad decision, as they all will, that it is one they can come back from.
But in today's plugged-in world, where the click of a mouse can change one's life, making a bad decision can be life-altering. Jake is a good kid, he never would have sent that video out into the world to hurt the young girl, yet that is what happened and it nearly destroys his family.
I cried a few times reading this novel, no more so than when Jake tells his dad that he screwed up again, and Richard says, "I'm your father. I'm always on your side." This is a good family, and how they try to live with what happened is something every parent can relate to, although we hope to never be tested as the Bergamots were.
This book takes you on an emotional, heart-rending journey, one that will make you think about the fragility of the life you have.
June 6, 2011
Somewhere on the journey from the comfortable upstate college town of Ithaca to the glistening moneyed world of downtown Manhattan, the Burgamots have lost their way.
Dad Richard has become consumed by his prestigious executive role at a major New York university. Mom Liz is fielding social calls and taking her young adopted daughter to sleepovers in a lush and decadent midtown hotel where “the central part of the suite looked exactly like the one Tony Soprano had once rented in a dream sequence…double sink, toilet, shower, and bidet in the size of a studio apartment”_. And their teenage son, Jake? He’s navigating adolescence without a roadmap. Like all too many teens, he feels like he “didn’t belong here, in the city, in this apartment, at this school, or in this family…”
This is a family crusin’ for a bruisin’. And it all comes to a head when one morning, Jake received an explicit emailed video from a sexually precocious eighth-grade admirer named Daisy. Stunned and clueless, Jake is overcome by a cocktail of emotions: “He’d gotten hard. He’d gotten proud. He’d been appalled, scared; he’d wanted to show off.” And just like that, without forethought, he clicks and forwards to a close friend…who clicks and forwards to HIS close friends…and so on. Soon the video has gone viral all over the world and Jake – and his entire family – is in murky legal waters.
Author and social observer Helen Schulman maps out this family’s spiraling journey to the top – and their ignoble withdrawal from favor. With cinematic pacing – reminding me somewhat of Zoe Heller’s What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal-- she moves her focus in and out, in a blistering look at a family on the crossroads
Had this book remained tightly focused on the ensuing scandal, it would have been a page turning “read.” But Ms. Schulman is more ambitious. She takes on broader themes: how one two-second bad decision can change a teen’s whole future, when today’s technology in involved. How one’s sense of identity and security are all fragile conceits. that can disappear in a heartbeat. And perhaps most important, how wealth without grounding can turn individuals into careless people who use questionable tactics to get optimum results. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, it becomes all too easy. The Bergamots, too, are on the verge of those who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”
With an abundance of psychological acuity, Helen Schulman tracks a family who is having difficulty managing “this beautiful life” – a life that shows cracks and fissures along its underbelly. Everyone is affected, even their young daughter Coco, who, with her overblown kindergarten graduation ceremony and over-the-top schedule, is primed (it is hinted) for a similar destiny to Daisy’s. The ending is wrapped up a little too quickly, but the fragility of the shattered sense of self – for Jake, for the young girl, for Liz and Richard – lingers. No one is insulated by privilege…not when the demands of life have become so complex. And no one, the author suggests – rich or not so rich – is immune to the sudden scandal in a digital age.
Dad Richard has become consumed by his prestigious executive role at a major New York university. Mom Liz is fielding social calls and taking her young adopted daughter to sleepovers in a lush and decadent midtown hotel where “the central part of the suite looked exactly like the one Tony Soprano had once rented in a dream sequence…double sink, toilet, shower, and bidet in the size of a studio apartment”_. And their teenage son, Jake? He’s navigating adolescence without a roadmap. Like all too many teens, he feels like he “didn’t belong here, in the city, in this apartment, at this school, or in this family…”
This is a family crusin’ for a bruisin’. And it all comes to a head when one morning, Jake received an explicit emailed video from a sexually precocious eighth-grade admirer named Daisy. Stunned and clueless, Jake is overcome by a cocktail of emotions: “He’d gotten hard. He’d gotten proud. He’d been appalled, scared; he’d wanted to show off.” And just like that, without forethought, he clicks and forwards to a close friend…who clicks and forwards to HIS close friends…and so on. Soon the video has gone viral all over the world and Jake – and his entire family – is in murky legal waters.
Author and social observer Helen Schulman maps out this family’s spiraling journey to the top – and their ignoble withdrawal from favor. With cinematic pacing – reminding me somewhat of Zoe Heller’s What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal-- she moves her focus in and out, in a blistering look at a family on the crossroads
Had this book remained tightly focused on the ensuing scandal, it would have been a page turning “read.” But Ms. Schulman is more ambitious. She takes on broader themes: how one two-second bad decision can change a teen’s whole future, when today’s technology in involved. How one’s sense of identity and security are all fragile conceits. that can disappear in a heartbeat. And perhaps most important, how wealth without grounding can turn individuals into careless people who use questionable tactics to get optimum results. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, it becomes all too easy. The Bergamots, too, are on the verge of those who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”
With an abundance of psychological acuity, Helen Schulman tracks a family who is having difficulty managing “this beautiful life” – a life that shows cracks and fissures along its underbelly. Everyone is affected, even their young daughter Coco, who, with her overblown kindergarten graduation ceremony and over-the-top schedule, is primed (it is hinted) for a similar destiny to Daisy’s. The ending is wrapped up a little too quickly, but the fragility of the shattered sense of self – for Jake, for the young girl, for Liz and Richard – lingers. No one is insulated by privilege…not when the demands of life have become so complex. And no one, the author suggests – rich or not so rich – is immune to the sudden scandal in a digital age.
February 8, 2016
Helen Schulman has written a well-crafted and articulate novel, full of trenchant observations about the competitiveness of everyday Manhattan life and the myriad small and big ways that people try to insulate themselves from the truth of life or relationships.
Schulman's novel is populated by characters who make compromises (whether it's the highly educated career woman who becomes a stay-at-home mother, the idealistic striver who becomes a selfish banker, the parents who inundate their children with money in lieu of affection) and then try to anesthetize themselves from the truth through sex, money, work, therapy, or actual drugs.
The main characters in the novel are the Bergamots, a high-achieving family of strivers. The parents grew up in working-class families, but by dint of hard work and impressive educational resumes, have managed to carve out a place for themselves somewhere in the middle of Manhattan's precarious social ladder.
The son is a coddled young man who does not (or has never been taught by his parents) to take responsibility for his actions in life. The plot of the novel centers around a party he attends in Riverdale one weekend, which results in the creation of a sex tape, and the consequences of this tape's dissemination to his schoolmates and the World Wide Web. Much like the Tom Wolfe novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, all of the characters involved shrug off culpability for their actions, yet their lives are affected by this tape in irreparable ways. Schulman adroitly captures the confusion and angst that all of the characters experience in our all-consuming media and news age. What is the role of parents as role models? Should they protect or punish their children? How should parents teach their children about sex and sexuality? How should teenage girls express their sexuality in a liberated, empowered manner?
The adults involved are just as venal and confused as the children, mostly worried about culpability and protecting their own names and reputations. The novel ends as a morality tale, with an endnote about the sad dissolution of the Bergamot family. It is as if they were Icarus, flying too close to the sun, and the sad epilogue is their comeuppance.
Schulman's novel is populated by characters who make compromises (whether it's the highly educated career woman who becomes a stay-at-home mother, the idealistic striver who becomes a selfish banker, the parents who inundate their children with money in lieu of affection) and then try to anesthetize themselves from the truth through sex, money, work, therapy, or actual drugs.
The main characters in the novel are the Bergamots, a high-achieving family of strivers. The parents grew up in working-class families, but by dint of hard work and impressive educational resumes, have managed to carve out a place for themselves somewhere in the middle of Manhattan's precarious social ladder.
The son is a coddled young man who does not (or has never been taught by his parents) to take responsibility for his actions in life. The plot of the novel centers around a party he attends in Riverdale one weekend, which results in the creation of a sex tape, and the consequences of this tape's dissemination to his schoolmates and the World Wide Web. Much like the Tom Wolfe novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, all of the characters involved shrug off culpability for their actions, yet their lives are affected by this tape in irreparable ways. Schulman adroitly captures the confusion and angst that all of the characters experience in our all-consuming media and news age. What is the role of parents as role models? Should they protect or punish their children? How should parents teach their children about sex and sexuality? How should teenage girls express their sexuality in a liberated, empowered manner?
The adults involved are just as venal and confused as the children, mostly worried about culpability and protecting their own names and reputations. The novel ends as a morality tale, with an endnote about the sad dissolution of the Bergamot family. It is as if they were Icarus, flying too close to the sun, and the sad epilogue is their comeuppance.
October 1, 2011
Start with a "perfect" upper middle-class academic family, add in a single event that soon wreaks havoc, and then watch the family disintegrate. That's the formula for Helen Schulman's novel This Beautiful Life. It is testimony to Schulman's capable storytelling that she manages to sustain her narrative without seeming overly formulaic. The author's style is a bit staccato at times, but what it lacks in lushness is made up for by her intelligent prose. And since the Bergamots family's downhill slide doesn't always move in a straight line, thereby avoiding the appearance of inevitability, there remains a little room for suspense as the story proceeds.
As an exploration of the ramifications of "sexting", this is a book for our time. The Internet has pretty much eroded personal privacy, and adolescent mistakes -- that in earlier days might have been relatively inconsequential -- can now be magnified by YouTube videos gone viral, creating paths of destruction in the process. Seeing this happen to a (fictional) family steeped in wealth and privilege can easily elicit the reader's schadenfreude, even if the average reader doesn't quite qualify for inclusion in the Bergamots' social circle.
While not particularly challenging, Schulman's novel is worth a few hours -- fine for an airplane trip (once it comes out in an inexpensive paperback edition). The characters are fairly interesting, although Schulman's tendency to intellectualize them keeps them at an emotional distance -- even the occasional family arguments are lacking in passion. The novel's ending is its weakest element; the final 10 pages seem much too abrupt. Although the story up to that point had meandered a bit, as life tends to do, one gets the sense that Schulman suddenly became bored with her project, or for some other reason needed to finish it off in a hurry.
As an exploration of the ramifications of "sexting", this is a book for our time. The Internet has pretty much eroded personal privacy, and adolescent mistakes -- that in earlier days might have been relatively inconsequential -- can now be magnified by YouTube videos gone viral, creating paths of destruction in the process. Seeing this happen to a (fictional) family steeped in wealth and privilege can easily elicit the reader's schadenfreude, even if the average reader doesn't quite qualify for inclusion in the Bergamots' social circle.
While not particularly challenging, Schulman's novel is worth a few hours -- fine for an airplane trip (once it comes out in an inexpensive paperback edition). The characters are fairly interesting, although Schulman's tendency to intellectualize them keeps them at an emotional distance -- even the occasional family arguments are lacking in passion. The novel's ending is its weakest element; the final 10 pages seem much too abrupt. Although the story up to that point had meandered a bit, as life tends to do, one gets the sense that Schulman suddenly became bored with her project, or for some other reason needed to finish it off in a hurry.
September 1, 2011
Meh. This story lacks something. The characters, especially the parents, Richard and Elizabeth (Liz) Bergamot are too good to be true. Their kids, 15-year-old Jake and 6-year-old Coco (a Chinese adoptee), are, for the most part, pretty good kids. One day, Jake unthinkingly forwards a sex video emailed to him by a 13-year-old girl who has a crush on him, and that’s when the trouble starts. Will the Bergamot family and their “beautiful life” be torn apart by one little click of a mouse button? Liz acts more like an older sister than a mother. She gets stoned when she can’t deal with things, and is cyber-stalking an ex-boyfriend – not even a boyfriend, just a guy she hooked up with in college. Stoned? Really? It had potential, but just didn’t live up to it. It was a fast, easy read though.
August 18, 2011
Much-hyped yarn about Internet sex scandal at tony UES prep school and its devastating consequences for a formerly picture-book family turns out to be riddled with stereotypes and lazy writing. Schulman was canny enough to pick an eminently book club-ready premise for her novel, but is unable to transcend her setting, which has been more crisply skewered elsewhere, or her characters, who are so bland and self-absorbed that they practically evaporate. Hard for me to believe I'm reading the same book as all those reviewers; maybe there was some kind of weird book-jacket mixup at the warehouse?
April 10, 2012
A more apt title would have been 'Single Keystroke Apocalypse'. A very of the moment novel about an act of teenage bravado and naivete going viral and taking down everyone in its wake.
I'm reminded of the quote by Mitch Radcliffe: A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
I need to figure out an application that would put outgoing emails in a holding tank for at least 30 minutes so there would be time to reconsider before sending. Yes, this would undoubtedly make me a millionaire...
I'm reminded of the quote by Mitch Radcliffe: A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
I need to figure out an application that would put outgoing emails in a holding tank for at least 30 minutes so there would be time to reconsider before sending. Yes, this would undoubtedly make me a millionaire...
January 1, 2018
What a pile of hot steaming shit.
I disliked every character in this book, but especially the main character. If you want to read a book about people with wealth and privilege who just kind of suck, go for it.
Also, there was a super weird passage that talked about the adopted Chinese daughter's vagina as a baby that struck me as super, super weird and creepy. There was a real sense of fetishizing and exoticizing the adopted daughter that was apropos of nothing and just kind of strange.
I disliked every character in this book, but especially the main character. If you want to read a book about people with wealth and privilege who just kind of suck, go for it.
Also, there was a super weird passage that talked about the adopted Chinese daughter's vagina as a baby that struck me as super, super weird and creepy. There was a real sense of fetishizing and exoticizing the adopted daughter that was apropos of nothing and just kind of strange.
October 30, 2014
This book is scary, especially if you are a parent of a teenager today. An unflinching portrait of modern society with all its many faults, a terrifying picture of what happens when you hit send on an email without thinking.
June 9, 2014
This hidden gem deals with the current vexing topic of kids “sexting,” that is, posting and sending unflattering sexual pictures and videos of themselves over the internet. Fifteen-year-old Jake Bergamot receives just such a video from Daisy, a 13-year-old admirer and schoolmate he meets at a party. In an unthinking moment of bravado, disgust, confusion—we are never quite sure which (indeed Jake himself is never 100% sure), he forwards the email to one of his buddies.
The rest is history as the video quickly goes viral: Jake and Daisy become instant pariahs. Jake’s family must deal with his expulsion from school and the legal ramifications of his having disseminated what amounts to child pornography. His ambitious dad, Richard, wants to “handle” the situation as he would any other pesky problem at work—with a cool head and a plan. Meanwhile, Jake's emotionally-stilted mom, Lizzie, grows ever more depressed as she becomes unwittingly addicted to internet porn while fantasizing about her college TA. And in the midst of all this turmoil, they plop adopted kindergartner, Coco, in front of the TV for weeks on end in an effort to shield her from the unseemly goings on around her, but she quietly absorbs all the toxic fallout nonetheless.
Not only is this the story of the Bergamot family’s collective downfall from one careless “click,” it is a scathing indictment of our communal addiction to electronic gizmos that have turned what was once private and unspoken into “content” for on-demand public consumption. We now have personal, portable, 24/7 access to everything and anything the world once considered bizarre and perverse. Today’s kids consume “screen sex” as readily as earlier generations popped Pez. And all the while, parents are at once too focused on their kids and too concerned about “making it” to consider in any meaningful way the injury these infectious glowing devices are causing their children and families—until it is too late.
Author Helen Schulman best sums up this generational sea change through Richard Bergamot's brooding over his son's fall from grace:
“Richard’s father loved him, too. Dad was a family man. He didn’t live so far from the ground. Dad didn’t focus on him, he didn’t coddle him, he didn’t help him with his homework or take his emotional temperature three times a day or do any of the things Richard and Lizzie do now, along with eating and breathing, as a way of life. Dad loved his boys within reason. Dad’s was a reasonable, conditional love, the condition being that Richard kept his nose clean, that he always did his best, that he conducted himself with honor.
“Richard and Lizzie and the girl’s parents, all the other parents at that school—they are both too close to their children and too far away from the ground. They are too accomplished. They have accumulated too much. They expect too much. They demand too much. They even love their kids too much. This love is crippling in its way.”
If you’ve ever had occasion to wonder, as every generation of parents does, “What’s wrong with kids nowadays?” this passage contains much wisdom and insight. My one quibble with the book is the somewhat jarring (and confusing) shift to third person present tense whenever the author narrates from Richard’s point of view. This was obviously a deliberate choice (the other chapters are consistently third person past tense). Are Richard’s perceptions supposed to be more “immediate” than the other family members’? And if so, why?
That nit-pick aside, Helen Schulman delivers a timely, compelling, and emotionally-charged story in a compact 222 pages. Against the backdrop of a simple, fast-paced tale flowing with artistic prose, she asks—subtly yet stubbornly—“What is technology doing to our kids?” Indeed, we might all take a second to ponder what will become of our lives now that a parallel “virtual universe” has overtaken our minds like an unchecked epidemic.
The rest is history as the video quickly goes viral: Jake and Daisy become instant pariahs. Jake’s family must deal with his expulsion from school and the legal ramifications of his having disseminated what amounts to child pornography. His ambitious dad, Richard, wants to “handle” the situation as he would any other pesky problem at work—with a cool head and a plan. Meanwhile, Jake's emotionally-stilted mom, Lizzie, grows ever more depressed as she becomes unwittingly addicted to internet porn while fantasizing about her college TA. And in the midst of all this turmoil, they plop adopted kindergartner, Coco, in front of the TV for weeks on end in an effort to shield her from the unseemly goings on around her, but she quietly absorbs all the toxic fallout nonetheless.
Not only is this the story of the Bergamot family’s collective downfall from one careless “click,” it is a scathing indictment of our communal addiction to electronic gizmos that have turned what was once private and unspoken into “content” for on-demand public consumption. We now have personal, portable, 24/7 access to everything and anything the world once considered bizarre and perverse. Today’s kids consume “screen sex” as readily as earlier generations popped Pez. And all the while, parents are at once too focused on their kids and too concerned about “making it” to consider in any meaningful way the injury these infectious glowing devices are causing their children and families—until it is too late.
Author Helen Schulman best sums up this generational sea change through Richard Bergamot's brooding over his son's fall from grace:
“Richard’s father loved him, too. Dad was a family man. He didn’t live so far from the ground. Dad didn’t focus on him, he didn’t coddle him, he didn’t help him with his homework or take his emotional temperature three times a day or do any of the things Richard and Lizzie do now, along with eating and breathing, as a way of life. Dad loved his boys within reason. Dad’s was a reasonable, conditional love, the condition being that Richard kept his nose clean, that he always did his best, that he conducted himself with honor.
“Richard and Lizzie and the girl’s parents, all the other parents at that school—they are both too close to their children and too far away from the ground. They are too accomplished. They have accumulated too much. They expect too much. They demand too much. They even love their kids too much. This love is crippling in its way.”
If you’ve ever had occasion to wonder, as every generation of parents does, “What’s wrong with kids nowadays?” this passage contains much wisdom and insight. My one quibble with the book is the somewhat jarring (and confusing) shift to third person present tense whenever the author narrates from Richard’s point of view. This was obviously a deliberate choice (the other chapters are consistently third person past tense). Are Richard’s perceptions supposed to be more “immediate” than the other family members’? And if so, why?
That nit-pick aside, Helen Schulman delivers a timely, compelling, and emotionally-charged story in a compact 222 pages. Against the backdrop of a simple, fast-paced tale flowing with artistic prose, she asks—subtly yet stubbornly—“What is technology doing to our kids?” Indeed, we might all take a second to ponder what will become of our lives now that a parallel “virtual universe” has overtaken our minds like an unchecked epidemic.
July 18, 2011
I'll admit my bias here and note that I can be a bit skeptical of the "ripped from the headlines" style of plot. I will glance at such a book with a bit of curiosity but tend to live my headline ripping to Law & Order types (though I really only like the Lenny-era reruns). I was curious though and hopeful when I started this book, provided to me by Harper in exchange for an unbiased review.
The Bergamot family is the picture of an upper-middle class family with a working dad, an educated mom who now stays home, a teenage son trying to fit in to a new school, and a kindergarden aged daughter adopted from China. They recently relocated to NYC from the quiet world of Ithaca for the father to explore a job offering both financial and personal rewards. This world, still one in transition as they all gain their footing in the city society, is blown apart when a younger teen girl (13 to his coming-up-on 16) sends a (disturbingly) pornographic email to the teenage son in an attempt to show him she's not too young for him (his rebuff of her at a party). The son sends it to another boy, largely out of shock and not knowing how to respond, and it snowballs from there passing to the whole school and eventually pretty widely beyond that.
The author explores how this incident impacts the full family from the father's work world to the mother's social circle as well as the school lives of the children. I appreciated that the author followed the whole family rather than focusing on one member and explored the different ways one event can hit different individuals. I just didn't feel it went deep enough. We do get to visit the thoughts of Mom, Dad, and Son with chapters focusing on each character. I appreciated this tactic but it still felt substantially lacking. I do not need to like characters in the books I read but I need to be interested in them and I just wasn't. I will note (w/o any true spoilerage) that the ending gives a peek into the future of the characters that I actually found more interesting than the main book itself.
The last few pages aside, I'm inclined to round down on this one. I want to give it 2.5 stars but neither GR nor Amazon allow halfs so I'm going to go with 2 stars out of 5. I always feel a bit bad writing a negative review but also think good reviews are meaningless if one isn't honest with the other end of the spectrum. This just didn't "do it" for me.
The Bergamot family is the picture of an upper-middle class family with a working dad, an educated mom who now stays home, a teenage son trying to fit in to a new school, and a kindergarden aged daughter adopted from China. They recently relocated to NYC from the quiet world of Ithaca for the father to explore a job offering both financial and personal rewards. This world, still one in transition as they all gain their footing in the city society, is blown apart when a younger teen girl (13 to his coming-up-on 16) sends a (disturbingly) pornographic email to the teenage son in an attempt to show him she's not too young for him (his rebuff of her at a party). The son sends it to another boy, largely out of shock and not knowing how to respond, and it snowballs from there passing to the whole school and eventually pretty widely beyond that.
The author explores how this incident impacts the full family from the father's work world to the mother's social circle as well as the school lives of the children. I appreciated that the author followed the whole family rather than focusing on one member and explored the different ways one event can hit different individuals. I just didn't feel it went deep enough. We do get to visit the thoughts of Mom, Dad, and Son with chapters focusing on each character. I appreciated this tactic but it still felt substantially lacking. I do not need to like characters in the books I read but I need to be interested in them and I just wasn't. I will note (w/o any true spoilerage) that the ending gives a peek into the future of the characters that I actually found more interesting than the main book itself.
The last few pages aside, I'm inclined to round down on this one. I want to give it 2.5 stars but neither GR nor Amazon allow halfs so I'm going to go with 2 stars out of 5. I always feel a bit bad writing a negative review but also think good reviews are meaningless if one isn't honest with the other end of the spectrum. This just didn't "do it" for me.
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