Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Long Island Compromise is Fleishman is in Trouble author Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s second novel, and it follows an American family forty years after their father’s brief kidnapping. Summarising this book in one sentence makes it sound quite dark - and I guess it is dark in some ways, but it’s also – in trademark Brodesser-Akner style – very fun. It’s a ‘people being people’ kind of novel, but the backdrop it is set against means that a lot still happens. This is an outrageously rich family with a traumatic background, after all, so they’re bound to do some wild things in a way that seems oddly normal. And what better author to write about that than Brodesser-Akner.
What I loved most about this novel was how well its characters were constructed. It’s made up of long chapters that mainly cover the lives of each of the three siblings; while each chapter feels like a character study, it also feels like being along with somebody for an intense (and at times quite stressful) journey. The story is both insightful and entertaining, and it shows that Brodesser-Akner has spent a long time with this fictional family. Getting to know them this intimately is both infuriating and a treat.
Not many books make me laugh, gasp, and tear up within the same story, but this one did. And I’m still thinking about its quiet ending which, after a book that had the same emotional hit of speed-watching 13 seasons of a sitcom in a single week, felt all the more impactful in its small revelations and slow fade-out.
One final reason to read the book? You won’t understand its title until you do!
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