“This was the part she hated, the part of a relationship that always nudged her to bail, the part where someone else’s misery or expectations or neediness crept into her carefully prescribed world. It was such a burden, other people’s lives.”
The Nest is the story of a semi-disfunctional family and these 4 siblings who have set all their grown up lives around The Nest, a fund that was left to them by their father but to which they can access just when the younger of them turnes 40. However, the fund is used by their mother to "rescue" the black sheep of the family, Leo, and, as to avoid a family scandal, pay off a girl he had a car accident with.
And of course his siblings are politely furious and want Leo to pay them back.
I loved the NY setting and the bits of NY life in the novel, I liked Bea, the most composed, caring and "normal" of the siblings, and I liked Stephanie, Leo's on and off partner. I also liked the fact that a lot of the characters are part of the literary world of NY.
I was not so taken with the story, very wordy for what the plot really is, and I was not very taken by the writing style, nice enough but it did not completely engage me in the story. I did not like at all Jack and Melody, both weak and plotty and not nice people really. I didn't think that the side story of Melody's twins daughters Nora and Louise has anything to do with the novel itself, it is a bit of an addition to "pulp" things up a bit, but in reality it felt to me as the odd one in.
In summary, an ok read but there are other novels about families which are a lot more interesting and funnier - Jonathan Tropper's books for example comes to my mind.
“She supposed she could Google, but she preferred to wonder.”
Overall rating: 6 Plot: 6 Writing style: 6 Cover: 7.5
Title:The Nest
Author: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Publisher: The Borough Press
Pages: 416
Publication year: 2016
Plot:
When black sheep Leo has a costly car accident, the Plumb siblings’ much-anticipated inheritance is suddenly wiped out. His brother and sisters come together and form a plan to get back what is owed them – each grappling with their own financial and emotional turmoil from the fallout. As ‘the nest’ fades further from view, they must decide whether they will build their lives anew, or fight to regain the futures they had planned . . .
The Author:
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney is the New York Times bestselling author of The Nest, which has been translated into more than 25 languages and optioned for film by Amazon Studios with Sweeney writing the adaptation. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.
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