Jason Furman's Reviews > Long Island Compromise

There is an excellent and possibly even truly great 350 page novel in this 450 page novel. The saga of a wealthy Jewish family in Long Island is prefaced by the father's kidnapping and release--and event that haunts everyone else, especially his three children, in the decades that follow. The bulk of the book is three almost separate but intersecting stories about each of his children. These move back and forth in time but center around the year their grandmother dies.

It is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but much less so than Fleishman Is in Trouble. And that characters are often way too absurd and exaggerated to feel real--all take the neurosis one associates with the works of Phillip Roth and Woody Allen but brings them to the next level. At times you care deeply for them in a pitying type of way but at other times you just do not care.

But it is insightful. And epic. And recognizable even in its absurdity. And worth reading.

(As an aside, I do wonder how knowing the gender of the author affects the way one reads the book. At times I found myself thinking "oh, this is a female Roth". At other times I found myself wondering why there was nothing recognizably female about it. Of course books should stand on their own but knowing a little about the author does affect the way one reads it.)