Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Monday, July 22, 2024--San Antonio

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a novel about 3 generations of a Jewish family.  The story begins in the 1940s when Zelig escapes from the Nazis and comes to America with a formula for making molded styrofoam forms to protect products that are being shipped. It is the story of his widow, his children, grandchildren, and extended family members.   Zelig became wealthy, and his progeny have lived easy lives of luxury.  The one blip that has occurred prior the present was that his son, who took over the factory, was kidnapped when only two of the three eventual grandchildren had been born and were both young.  The kidnapping affected the lives of everyone.  Although the son came back safely after a ransom was paid, he had spent a week while kidnapped that resulted in life-long suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  No one was, therefore, ever allowed to talk about the kidnapping--when it happened, what it involved, how it affected them, etc.  But most of the book takes place in modern times and is the story of the end of the family business and the end of the regular quarterly payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars that everyone in the family has come to expect.  Much of the first 2/3 of the book concentrates on the spoiled 3 children who were never learned to take any responsibility seriously, have wasted money along the way, and find unexpectedly that their quarterly payments have ended.  Other reviewers have talked about how funny the novel is.  I only chuckled a few times throughout the whole book.  As I read about each of these 3 adult children, all I wanted to do was to yell at them for the stupid decisions they were making in life.  The story does get better toward the end as everything comes to a head with unknown truths coming out and the family having to face a reckoning (of a sort).  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.