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Taffy Brodesser-Akner Overcooks It
A wealthy Jewish family gets the Succession treatment in the writer’s hectic second novel.
After that mad dash of a first chapter, we are shuttled forward in time to “late September just a few years ago.” Ruth and Carl, who is so traumatized he “might as well have been a sofa cushion,” are still living in Middle Rock, still wealthy, and still not talking about what happened decades earlier. Meanwhile in L.A., the Fletchers’ now-42-year-old middle child, Bernard (nicknamed Beamer), is hog-tied in an airport hotel room, being attended to by two dominatrix types he used his family money to hire — unbeknownst to his wife. Brodesser-Akner’s magpie style, layering a hum of worry with dialogue and voice-mails and scenes from mobile-phone games, has a singsongy appeal, but it can be difficult to sustain such a high-strung voice over nearly 500 pages.
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