Long Island Compromise
I had bought this book — a used copy of Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (of Fleishman is in Trouble fame) — to put in our Little Free Library. (It’s now there.)
Instead, I thought hmmm, I may want to read it, so I brought it up to my office. (I have now read it.)
It hung out on the floor by my desk, just as it’s pictured, in a liminal gesture that communicated that I wasn’t fully committed to reading it, but I also wasn’t not committed. (Similar to how I have not yet hung this screen print my mom made, also pictured, but that’s only because the framing place originally framed it upside down and we temporarily lost our art-hanging mojo.)
Long Island Compromise (let’s call it LIC, which is different than LIC for Long Island City, and definitely different than the expanse of highway called the LIE, but also not a LLC even though a family-owned factory is a symbol for the rise and fall of a family, congruent with demographic trends) is for sure what I call a gobble up book (think Nathan Hill, Jean Hanff Korelitz) and despite its heft (400+ pages), I read it over a weekend. (And it wasn’t like I wasn’t doing anything else on the weekend…hellooo, awesome bike ride [& other stuff].)
LIC is genuinely funny (I lol’d), genuinely touching (I was invested in the characters), genuinely excellent storytelling (not subtle but also not like “check out my plot point bc I’m taking ya on a ride!”-ish), and a genuinely lovely look at “humanity.” (As in, people’s noble attempts at figuring it all out.) (I know, “humanity” is an eye-roll-y word, but once in a while don’t you want to read something that embraces life’s complexity but also strives for a clear-eyed, harmonious stasis?)
Guys (y’all): LIC, this banger of a novel following a Long Island-based family for decades after one member — who, interestingly, is a bit of a silent, hovering specter in the book — is kidnapped and then returned and how family members leave their pasts behind (or are haunted by them) (btw, the plot is based on a true story Brodesser-Akner remembers from her childhood) and ponder the end game (that is, “the point”) of a life, is so, so fab.
(Also: ‘cameo’ by Mandy Patinkin!)
originally published on instagram