Long Island Compromise

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble comes a darkly exhilarating novel about an American family and its inheritance - the safety and wealth that they fought for, and the precarity of their survival that is their legacy.

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He is brutalised, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Miraculously, Carl, his wife and his three kids are left to move on with their lives, and resume their prized places in the ongoing saga of the American dream.

But nearly forty years later, when Carl's mother dies, the trauma that has been bubbling beneath the Fletchers' lives all this time surfaces at last. It becomes apparent that Carl has been quietly pursuing closure to the kidnapping for all these years, and his wife and children must face that the money that they believed bought them safety was actually never capable of doing any such thing.

Long Island Compromise spans generations, winding through decades of history all the way through to the wild present, dealing along the way with all the mainstays of American Jewish life and the timeless questions about wealth, trauma, and the American soul.

Review

Not gonna sugarcoat this: Long Island Compromise is the best book I've read this year. You do not want to miss it -- Harlan Coben

Very, very good. Dare I say . . . I liked it even more than Fleishman -- Elizabeth Day

An ambitious, funny family drama . . . Lavishly comic -- Susie Goldsbrough ― The Times

Elegant and devastating . . . A rich, stylish, moving and funny novel . . . Every reader will find something here that they can recognise, that will resonate and endure -- Erica Wagner ― Financial Times

[A] scabrous satire of the super-rich . . . Brodesser-Akner is a keen observer of class aspiration as a survival method. -- Jennifer Wilson ― The New Yorker

A lip-smacking tale of family, wealth and self-destruction told with relish -- John Self ― Guardian

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

Book of the summer -- nay, the year. So funny and sprawling and beautifully written. The audio version is read by the great Edoardo Ballerini who is sublime -- David Sedaris

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

This novel needs to come with a health warning: don't take it on a crowded train. You will laugh inappropriately and frequently, and start reading whole passages aloud to complete strangers who catch your eye. Long Island Compromise is everything I was dreaming it would be -- shocking, tender, profound and delicious -- Emily Maitlis

Completely engrossing and absorbing; both enjoyable and funny while also substantive and profound -- Cathy Rentzenbrink

About the Author

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. Fleishman Is in Trouble, her first novel, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, and was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. The TV adaptation from FX, created and executive produced by Taffy, was nominated for seven Emmys.

Long Island Compromise is her second novel.