Long Island Compromise

An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, and the wild legacy of trauma and inheritance, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble

“Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?”

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything―substance, foodstuff, women―in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.

About the Author

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of two novels: Fleishman Is in Trouble, which she adapted into an Emmy-nominated limited series for FX in 2022; and Long Island Compromise. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

“Glorious ... a great American Jewish novel whose brew of hilarity, heartbreak, and smarts recalls the best of Philip Roth.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Exuberant and absorbing ... Long Island Compromise is ingeniously plotted, its various storylines building toward several extremely satisfying plot twists—by which I mean the best kind of twists, ones that are earned, that make the reader simultaneously gasp in surprise and want to hit oneself because, in retrospect, they make so much sense that there's no excuse for not having seen them coming ... Like Franzen's, Brodesser-Akner's sympathies are broad and deep, and like him, she is a person on whom nothing is lost ... She is also, like him, a sly and stylish writer, adept at using comedy and clever comedic framing to plumb the depths of her characters' misery" —Adelle Waldman, The Atlantic

"Is this book as good [as Fleishman]? It's better. Sprawling yet nimble, this is her Big American Reform Jewish Novel ... All those well-timed twists, neat callbacks and tidy scenes are a mitzvah for this satisfying, touching novel. The talented Taffy Brodesser-Akner over here" —Sloane Crosley, The New York Times

"Brodesser-Akner had me at 'hello' with this opening line from her raucous and ravishing Long Island Compromise, an epic family saga that joins the ranks of such great American novels as The Corrections and Middlesex ... This author's talents are boundless ... A humane, brazen, gorgeous novel whose words dance exuberantly on the page" —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times

Dimensions: 15.5 x 3.5 x 23.5 cm