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464 pages, Hardcover
First published July 9, 2024
And the Fletcher children had not been immune to the inertia of all rich kids, which was to lack the imagination that the money could ever possibly stop coming in. They spent their money like third-generation American children do: quickly, and without thinking too hard about it.
…
No one in the history of Middle Rock, of Long Island, of New York, of maybe America and therefore the world had had the potential and rigor for achievement that Jenny Fletcher had had. When finally she fell, it was from the top of the skyscraper. And like most such falls, it was a suicide.
But hold on. Like all the other Bible stories, it’s best told from the beginning.
…
Maybe that was the real Long Island Compromise, that you can be successful on your own steam or you can be a basket case, and whichever you are is determined by the circumstances into which you were born. Your poverty will create a great drive in your children. Or your wealth will doom them into the veal that Jenny described at her science fair, people who are raised to never be able to support a life so that when they’re finally allowed to wander outside their cages for the first time on their way to their slaughter, they can’t even stand up on their own legs. But the people who rise to success on their own never stop feeling the fear at the door, and the people lucky enough to be born into comfort and safety never become fully realized people in the first place. And who is to say which is better?