The Nest

Summary (from the publisher): A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives.

 

Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.

Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they’ve envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.

This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney brings a remarkable cast of characters to life to illuminate what money does to relationships, what happens to our ambitions over the course of time, and the fraught yet unbreakable ties we share with those we love.

Review: Four adult siblings - Leo, Beatrice, Jack, and Melody Plumb - are counting on their joint trust fund, affectionately referred to as "The Nest" to solve a multitude of largely self-imposed problems. However, their long awaited for inheritance is threatened when their charming and irresponsible oldest brother, Leo, gets behind the wheel while drunk with a nineteen-year-old waitress as a passenger. The accident that follows has long lasting repercussions for all four siblings and their families, who must adjust to a new reality without the guarantee of The Nest solving all their problems. This is a novel that illustrates that life rarely goes as planned.

This story is about a family, albeit a very dysfunctional one. All four siblings are very different, with vastly different motivations and none are close to their cold and standoffish mother. Oldest Leo has blown through a fortune he made early in life with the help of his spendthrift and shrewish wife. Beatrice, once a promising writer, has lapsed into years of disappointing attempts at a novel and the death of her longtime lover. Jack is a struggling antiques dealer who has compromised the security of his vacation home and is hiding the reality of his financial situation from his husband Walker. And youngest Melody, a devoted housewife, has plotted every step of her twin daughters' lives and is counting on the nest to send them to college and to maintain the house she shares with her daughters and husband Walter. The novel is adept at deftly slipping between perspectives of all the siblings but also other family members and others caught in the web of the Plumb family and The Nest. Sweeney does an excellent job of creating distinct characters and keeping the reader interested in the interconnected web of individuals.

Although the siblings blame Leo for the loss of most of The Nest, all the siblings must confront how much they were counting on the money to solve their problems. In doing so, they all radically reevaluate their lives and move forward, largely for the better. "Through all the years, the coupon cutting, working on the house every weekend until her knees ached and her hands were cracked and bleeding, rarely buying anything new for herself - or Walt - off in the distance her fortieth birthday glowed like a distant lighthouse, flashing its beam of rescue. She would turn forty and the money would drop into their account." When this rescue fails to materialize, all the Plumbs must instead face reality and find solutions to their problems on their own. Without a fairy tale ending of The Nest, each of the Plumbs must confront facts they've conveniently avoided.

The one large complaint I had with this novel was the conclusion to the Leo storyline. He is tidily disposed of, not unlike a fairy tale villain. While he is certainly not the villain, I felt like it was a poor solution on the author's part to treat him as a problem character to be fixed by writing him out of the family's story. While the overall message of this novel seems to be that the loss of money can be overcome and family ties trump differences and disappointments, I was disappointed to see Leo be the exception to this message.

This novel is an illuminating look at the affect of money on relationships, on failed ambitions, new beginnings, and the ties of family and shared experiences despite differences. In the end, what seems like a tragedy - the loss of most of The Nest - is merely an inconvenient setback. All the Plumbs land on their feet. In a realistic move, Sweeney has created a family that, while unlikely to ever be close or free from conflict, is still a family that loves each other and is doing its best.

Stars: 3