Book #29: The Privileges

Title: The Privileges
Author: Jonathan Dee

Somehow, this book slipped into the suitcase and made it to Hawaii. I figured that after reading a bunch of books for the Whitney Awards judging, I'd need a palate cleanser. The Privileges is definitely a different kind of book than the ones I've been reading lately. It begins auspiciously enough, at the wedding of Adam and Cynthia Morey, fresh out of college and eager to make their mark on the world. For the next decade, he climbs the corporate ladder and she tries to figure out a place in Manhattan for a woman who had children at 23 and 24 (which, in their social circle, just doesn't happen). Neither Cynthia nor Adam is perfect-- she's lonely and depressed and barely tolerates any family member outside of her husband and children; he's so consumed by the headiness of making money that he's started squirreling money away offshore that he's made through insider trading.

They get rich. Fabulously rich. Rich enough to have a penthouse in the city and a house in the Hamptons and a lifestyle of foundations and facelifts and fancy vacations. And at this point, I'm not sure I really understand the story anymore. It's much less linear than what I've been reading-- the smart daughter becomes a drug addict. The parents love her and want to help her, but they also want to keep their name out of the papers. The son wants to live as "normal" a life as possible, which is kind of hard when his family's foundation is in the news and family members pop in on their private plane. For all their success, the Moreys aren't a happy family, and Dee seems to say that there's hollowness at the core of making money your god. As if we didn't know that already. But he creates characters that are complicated and flawed and don't feel like they've come out of the stockroom of a Jasper Fforde novel. And while it's hard to figure out what this book means, it's also nice to read a book every once in a while where the author gives the reader credit for being smart enough to wrestle it out and chew on it a little bit. I've missed those things.