DNF 62% Too many books too little time for mediocre books...

This novel’s epigraph includes a quote from George W. Bush: “When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.” That is a perfect summary of the book; it is about three young people acting irresponsibly.

Roger Whitby, the patriarch of a once enormously wealthy family, dies and leaves his diminished fortune to his 21-year-old son. Nick is his youngest son, actually a stepson; Roger’s fourth wife was a single mother when she met Roger. Though Roger has several other children from his previous three marriages, Nick inherits everything, including houses currently occupied by these other children.

The book focuses on three siblings from three of Roger’s marriages. Nick is unaware of his father’s death because he is a member of an eco-terrorist group and has to go into hiding after an attack on a biotech lab. Shelley drops out of college and gets a job as an amanuensis for a blind architect with whom she develops an unhealthy relationship. Brooke is a nurse who becomes pregnant but is really in love with a woman. Shelley and Brooke could both lose their homes to Nick and so are anxious to find him.

None of the three is likeable. The reader is supposed to feel sympathy for the three because each was abandoned by Roger; flashbacks are used to emphasize their feelings of abandonment when Roger left their mothers and thereafter gave them only sporadic attention: “But every time he’d shown up had also corresponded with a minor breakdown in his daily life.” As a consequence, they are looking for the affection and stability they didn’t have as children. They also feel burdened by the expectations placed on them because of their family name: “The Whitbys of the last few generations were rather afflicted with the sincere and problematic issue of not knowing what the hell to do.”

Actually, however, the Whitby name means less and less; in fact, the book opens commenting on this: “There was a time when the death of a Whitby would have made the evening post. Two generations earlier, flags would have been flown at half-mast and taps played in town squares at dusk. . . . But when Roger Whitby Jr. died half a century later, there was no such hubbub.” The name does, however, still carry enough cachet that it gives people a sense of superiority; one outsider comments on the greatest benefit of being a Whitby: “you were born knowing you had worth. This entitlement, randomly assigned by the universe, was simply not fair.” Nick, Shelley and Brooke need to overcome any feelings of being extraordinary and get on with “the beastly process of becoming” their own persons.

The three are spoiled rich kids. The author takes pains to point out that “The rich are no different from the rest; different only, perhaps, in the inclination to be more outrageous.” However, it seems that the rich take longer to grow up. (Maybe the title has more than one meaning?) Only at 21 years of age does Nick realize he must accept responsibility for his decisions and their consequences: “As he owned up to it all, he realized that every single action was a result of his own choices. He was responsible for it all”?! They also seem to have little self-control; all three have anger issues: Nick “was filled with an anger that teetered on uncontrollable” and “A sense of injustice began to fill [Shelley] with anger. . . . It simply wasn’t fair” and “Overcome with anger, [Brooke] dropped to her knees on the wet sand too, exasperated.” Brooke calls Shelley “young and self-absorbed” but 37-year-old Brooke is not much better. She is in a panic because she might actually have to pay rent for the first time in her life?! The truth is that the three have endless opportunities yet all they do is whine.

I really struggled to get through the book. It goes on and on (450+ pages) and I cared less and less about the three protagonists, three poor rich kids who keep acting irresponsibly and making stupid decisions. The author is the great-granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; her 2014 marriage received mention in The New York Times. She could very well be writing about her family, but the portrait of her generation is not flattering.

Note: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

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