Long Island Compromise
On sale
27th March 2025
Price: £9.99
‘Is this book as good [as Fleishman]? It’s better’ THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘Might be a masterpiece’ HUGH LAURIE
‘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 in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He is brutalised, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Miraculously, Carl, his wife and his three kids are left to move on with their lives, and resume their prized places in the ongoing saga of the American dream.
But nearly forty years later, when Carl’s mother dies, the trauma that has been bubbling beneath the Fletchers’ lives all this time surfaces at last. It becomes apparent that Carl has been quietly pursuing closure to the kidnapping for all these years, and his wife and children must face that the money that they believed bought them safety was actually never capable of doing any such thing.
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]
‘Might be a masterpiece’ HUGH LAURIE
‘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 in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He is brutalised, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Miraculously, Carl, his wife and his three kids are left to move on with their lives, and resume their prized places in the ongoing saga of the American dream.
But nearly forty years later, when Carl’s mother dies, the trauma that has been bubbling beneath the Fletchers’ lives all this time surfaces at last. It becomes apparent that Carl has been quietly pursuing closure to the kidnapping for all these years, and his wife and children must face that the money that they believed bought them safety was actually never capable of doing any such thing.
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]
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Reviews
An ambitious, funny family drama . . . Lavishly comic
A lip-smacking tale of family, wealth and self-destruction told with relish
Elegant and devastating . . . A rich, stylish, moving and funny novel . . . Every reader will find something here that they can recognise, that will resonate and endure
Long Island Compromise interrogates wealth, status, dysfunctional relationships and inherited trauma, all with Brodesser-Akner's typically incisive brand of wit
Is this book as good [as Fleishman]? It's better. Sprawling yet nimble, this is her Big American Reform Jewish Novel . . . All those well-timed twists, neat callbacks and tidy scenes are a mitzvah for this satisfying, touching novel. The talented Taffy Brodesser-Akner over here
Brodesser-Akner had me at "hello" with this opening line from her raucous and ravishing Long Island Compromise, an epic family saga that joins the ranks of such great American novels as The Corrections and Middlesex . . . This author's talents are boundless . . . A humane, brazen, gorgeous novel whose words dance exuberantly on the page
[A] scabrous satire of the super-rich . . . Brodesser-Akner is a keen observer of class aspiration as a survival method.
The pleasure of Brodesser-Akner's writing is her ability to make us consider a weighty subject in a way that feels thrillingly original . . . Greatness comes so often at the expense of what is enjoyable. Long Island Compromise is both, and then some
This novel needs to come with a health warning: don't take it on a crowded train. You will laugh inappropriately and frequently, and start reading whole passages aloud to complete strangers who catch your eye. Long Island Compromise is everything I was dreaming it would be -- shocking, tender, profound and delicious
Not gonna sugarcoat this: Long Island Compromise is the best book I've read this year. You do not want to miss it
Completely engrossing and absorbing; both enjoyable and funny while also substantive and profound
The status book you'll want to be seen with. As ever, Taffy Brodesser-Akner proves she's a master at uncovering the hdiden human emotions that connect us all, regardless of who we are
Very, very good. Dare I say . . . I liked it even more than Fleishman
Exuberant and absorbing . . . Long Island Compromise is ingeniously plotted, its various storylines building toward several extremely satisfying plot twists -- by which I mean the best kind of twists, ones that are earned, that make the reader simultaneously gasp in surprise and want to hit oneself because, in retrospect, they make so much sense that there's no excuse for not having seen them coming . . . Like Franzen's, Brodesser-Akner's sympathies are broad and deep, and like him, she is a person on whom nothing is lost . . . She is also, like him, a sly and stylish writer, adept at using comedy and clever comedic framing to plumb the depths of her characters' misery
This book is DYNAMITE. Inhaled it in two sittings
Not many books make me laugh, gasp, and tear up within the same story, but this one did . . . One final reason to read the book? You won't understand its title until you do!
Now one of my favourite Jewish novels . . . It is SO good . . . It is [a book] that will be read for the ages and will provide a lot of joy, comfort and recognition to people now. Because it's not just a great Jewish novel, it's great literature.
I'm no judge -- of anything at all -- but I think Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise might be a masterpiece
Book of the summer -- nay, the year. So funny and sprawling and beautifully written. The audio version is read by the great Edoardo Ballerini who is sublime