Dear Great Book Guru,  Every place I go in the last week people are talking about a new book set on Long Island about a kidnapping that took place fifty years ago. Have you read it and -if so- would you recommend it?  Lover of All Things Long Island

Dear Lover of All Things ….. Yes- I just finished Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s newest novel LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE and what an epic tale she tells.  At the core of the book is an actual  kidnapping with a fictionalized account of its aftermath on the lives of  Carl Fletcher -the victim, his wife, mother , three children, and their entire secular and religious community. The story actually begins decades before the kidnapping - during World War II when the Fletcher patriarch is saved from certain death and his fortune assured by a chance encounter in Europe. He arrives in New York, opens a plastics factory, and the family settles in the affluent North Shore village of  Middle Rock- closely modeled on Long Island’s  Great Neck. Their wealth grows as does their stature in the community. Traumatized by the kidnapping, each family member gets to tell his/her story and we quickly realize that no one has escaped the brutality  of the original crime. The community too is harmed irreparably with its realization that religion,  money and status offer no protection from life’s calamities. Ultimately, the myths that the Fletchers have based their identity also collapse and each family member must confront long hidden truths. Highly recommended!

 

Dear Great Book Guru, I was at a favorite bookstore of ours in Brooklyn “Books Are Magic” when I noticed a posting of an author visit.  The book looked very interesting particularly to us living here in Sea Cliff: an old Victorian house with a long history - about to be renovated.  Are you familiar with it?  Lover of Old Houses

Dear Lover of Old Houses, J. Courtney Sullivan’s THE CLIFFS is a fascinating novel set in the cliffs of Maine, but, except for the ocean views, could have taken place in Sea Cliff.  Told from the viewpoints of five families who have lived in the cliffs, the book opens with the story of Jane Flanagan, a high school senior who has won a scholarship to nearby Bates College and is intrigued by an abandoned violet-colored Victorian mansion.  Everything is intact - books, dishes, paintings, furniture… but no one has lived in the house for many years. Fast forward twenty years and Jane - now a Harvard archivist - returns to discover a wealthy Beacon Hill summer resident has purchased the house and is the midst of modernizing it. But something is amiss - there is a haunting sense of foreboding and Jane is hired to trace its previous owners.  The remainder of the book is told from the perspective of  the women who had  lived in the house: the original builders, the Littletons; the Troy sisters who ran it as a boarding house; Marilyn - a ninety year old painter; Sister Eliza - a former Shaker; and finally Naomi, a Penobscot who gives us the insight of the original inhabitants of the land on which the house is built.  A fascinating look into the history of one house and indeed - a whole nation - highly recommended!