About this Event
Event guidelines:
- All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
- Tickets are limited to restrict capacity.
- Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
- A signing will follow the talk.
- Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
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 in a cloistered town on the nicest part of Long Island, 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 begins the hard work of moving 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, too.
But nearly forty years later, when Carl’s mother dies and the family comes home to mourn her, it becomes 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. And their three grown children are each a mess, as well: 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 another 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 successes and their failures.
Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, 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, orgies, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.
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, and Long Island Compromise. She lives in New York City.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Kane Street Synagogue, 236 Kane Street, Brooklyn, United States
USD 10.00 to USD 35.00
