Long Island Compromise

'Is this book as good [as Fleishman]? It's better' THE NEW YORK TIMES 'The best book I've read this year' HARLAN COBEN 'Very, very good' ELIZABETH DAY 'The book of the summer, nay, the year' DAVID SEDARIS 'This book is DYNAMITE. Inhaled it in two sittings' CAITLIN MORAN 'Shocking, tender, profound and delicious' EMILY MAITLIS 'Lavishly comic' THE TIMES 'A lip-smacking tale' GUARDIAN 'Elegant and devastating' FINANCIAL TIMES 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, brutalised and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife, kids and exquisite Long Island home less than a week later, and the family moves on with their gilded lives. But now, nearly forty years later, it seems that nobody ever got over anything, after all. With a death in the family, the hidden struggles of the Fletchers come bubbling to the surface. Carl has spent years secretly seeking closure to the mystery of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has given up everything to protect her husband's fragile emotional health and keep the business thriving. Their three grown children aren't doing much better: Nathan's chronic existential fear won't allow him to advance at his law fi rm; Beamer, a failing Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything - substances, food, women - at any cost; and Jenny, with her brilliant mind, is desperate to prove she is not anything like her family by working in trade unions (whilst still receiving quarterly payouts from the family business). Money was what put the Fletchers in danger, but it has also protected them - until now... 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. MORE PRAISE FOR LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE: 'The status book you'll want to be seen with' STYLIST '[A] scabrous satire' THE NEW YORKER 'This author's talents are boundless' LA TIMES 'Substantive and profound' CATHY RENTZENBRINK 'Greatness so often comes at the expense of what is enjoyable. Long Island Compromise is both, and then some' IPAPER 'Exuberant and absorbing' ATLANTIC PRAISE FOR FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE: 'There is no one that this book isn't for . . . Pure brilliance' INDIA KNIGHT, THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Could be one of the books of my entire lifetime. I've never felt so seen' GRACE DENT, GUARDIAN 'Sharp and wicked, insightful and funny, and then suddenly so touching' DAVID NICHOLLS 'A work of utter perfection' ELIZABETH GILBERT [FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE was a Sunday Times bestseller (UK) in August 2019 and a New York Times bestseller (USA) in June 2019]

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.