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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
I received a review copy through First to Read. This does not affect my rating or opinions.
3.5 stars.
Literary fiction generally falls outside my comfort zone, but this one has a kind of charm that I can't quite explain. The writing alternates between plain and function (in a good way) and so-accurate-it-almost-hurts observations wherein nothing is sacred and no one is safe; there are quiet stop and smell the roses moments, bemused people-watching scenes, pithy remarks on modern society, et cetera.
I related intensely and embarrassingly to aspects of Ethan's and Maggie's lives. (Arthur, not so much. His POV was very "cis straight privileged male" which means probably exactly what you're thinking: there's a lot of staring at female undergraduates and wounded masculinity.) This is very much focused on character and theme, not so much in the way of plot — there are definite plotlines and lots of tension, but it's kind of a slow-moving narrative. (Still waters and all that.)
Although the progression and development were interesting, something about the ending wasn't quite satisfying. It wasn't too abrupt, because the transition felt natural and the chronology/timeline was well-established, and it all did seem a logical continuation/closure for the established arcs, but on some level it just felt a little off to me.
content warnings:
rep:
3.5 stars.
It was practically the Alter family credo, an anti-Hippocratic oath: First, Do No Good.
Literary fiction generally falls outside my comfort zone, but this one has a kind of charm that I can't quite explain. The writing alternates between plain and function (in a good way) and so-accurate-it-almost-hurts observations wherein nothing is sacred and no one is safe; there are quiet stop and smell the roses moments, bemused people-watching scenes, pithy remarks on modern society, et cetera.
He was not at ease around people and regarded those who were with envy and suspicion. Whenever Ethan caught someone looking at him on the subway, his first thought was that he was doing something wrong. Standing wrong. Breathing wrong. Then his cheeks would flush with anger. Why should he doubt himself? Why should he make himself small, when lesser souls sat on life with their legs spread open?
I related intensely and embarrassingly to aspects of Ethan's and Maggie's lives. (Arthur, not so much. His POV was very "cis straight privileged male" which means probably exactly what you're thinking: there's a lot of staring at female undergraduates and wounded masculinity.) This is very much focused on character and theme, not so much in the way of plot — there are definite plotlines and lots of tension, but it's kind of a slow-moving narrative. (Still waters and all that.)
Although the progression and development were interesting, something about the ending wasn't quite satisfying. It wasn't too abrupt, because the transition felt natural and the chronology/timeline was well-established, and it all did seem a logical continuation/closure for the established arcs, but on some level it just felt a little off to me.
content warnings:
Spoiler
kinkshaming, minor sexual content, dysfunctional marriages, infidelity, unhealthy/potentially disordered eating habits and mentions of subsequent weight loss, off-page death of parent due to cancer, kleptomaniarep:
Spoiler
Jewish main characters (Alter family), gay primary character (Ethan), diverse minor characters
Arthur Alter is reaching the end of an unsatisfying teaching career in the engineering department at a prominent university in St. Louis. He's also behind on his mortgage payments, so he invites his estranged children – Ethan and Maggie – back from New York in hopes of convincing them to bail him out using money they inherited from their mother two years prior.
I had high hopes for this book. It certainly had some good moments. It takes an interesting look at what it means to be a "good person", and at how people deal with grief. Overall, I felt it was well paced and the writing was pretty solid.
However, I had a hard time getting into it because of the characters. Arthur is self-centered despite being guilt-stricken over his past. Ethan doesn't seem to care about much of anything – even his attempts to come to terms with his experiences as an undergrad feel a bit half-hearted. Maggie is so self-righteous she can't see straight.
I wish the Alters had a little more depth, instead of being caricatures of their faults. While it's nice to read a book that doesn't make its cast too perfect, their lack of redeeming qualities made it hard to care what happened to them.
I had high hopes for this book. It certainly had some good moments. It takes an interesting look at what it means to be a "good person", and at how people deal with grief. Overall, I felt it was well paced and the writing was pretty solid.
However, I had a hard time getting into it because of the characters. Arthur is self-centered despite being guilt-stricken over his past. Ethan doesn't seem to care about much of anything – even his attempts to come to terms with his experiences as an undergrad feel a bit half-hearted. Maggie is so self-righteous she can't see straight.
I wish the Alters had a little more depth, instead of being caricatures of their faults. While it's nice to read a book that doesn't make its cast too perfect, their lack of redeeming qualities made it hard to care what happened to them.
La scuola di scrittura c’è e si vede, però che noia, che tedio. Da qualche parte va a parare ma è tutto troppo asettico per i miei gusti.
A very good debut.
It's well written, engaging and quite entertaining.
I liked the style of writing and the humour in this book.
The cast of characters was not really likeable but they were complex and interesting, very well written.
The plot was interesting and there's never a moment of bore.
I look forward to reading other books by this writer.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Random House UK and Netgalley for this ARC
It's well written, engaging and quite entertaining.
I liked the style of writing and the humour in this book.
The cast of characters was not really likeable but they were complex and interesting, very well written.
The plot was interesting and there's never a moment of bore.
I look forward to reading other books by this writer.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Random House UK and Netgalley for this ARC
The Alters are a very special kind of family. As their telling name suggests, they want to be there for the others, alter in Latin, what leaves them in a complete mess. After mother Francine’s death, Arthur runs deeply in debt and is not realising that his career is over and that it is only a question of time until his Midwestern college sets him free. His son Ethan had started a big career after college, but found his work dull und useless and finally just quit. Daughter Maggie had higher ambitions from the start, but troubles financing her work at non-profit organisations leaves her almost famished. When Arthur calls for a family reunion to save the family home, Maggie and Ethan are not sure if they want to come. And from their past, this reunion can only end in a catastrophe.
Andrew Ridker’s debut is a tour de force through a family history narrated in a hilarious tone that reminds me strongly of the classic Jewish wit and humour. The characters suffer their shortcomings, but are never humiliated. He treats them with a generous smile, knowing that they can’t actually change the way they are. He integrates stereotypes carefully so that it is a great fun to deconstruct them, starting with the family name and ending with the fact that it is money that drives the story.
The author created some quite interesting characters, even though they try to lead a meaningful life, selfless and to the benefit of others, all three of them withdraw from the world and social contacts and in the end, find themselves only circling around themselves. For me, this seems to be the most central question of the novel: how can you lead a meaningful life, that has a purpose and a lasting impact on the world. Careers do not seem to be the solution, but the absence of careers also isn’t the answer. Just as the Alters, the reader will have to figure out for himself what makes you happy and gives a meaning to your time on earth.
Andrew Ridker’s debut is a tour de force through a family history narrated in a hilarious tone that reminds me strongly of the classic Jewish wit and humour. The characters suffer their shortcomings, but are never humiliated. He treats them with a generous smile, knowing that they can’t actually change the way they are. He integrates stereotypes carefully so that it is a great fun to deconstruct them, starting with the family name and ending with the fact that it is money that drives the story.
The author created some quite interesting characters, even though they try to lead a meaningful life, selfless and to the benefit of others, all three of them withdraw from the world and social contacts and in the end, find themselves only circling around themselves. For me, this seems to be the most central question of the novel: how can you lead a meaningful life, that has a purpose and a lasting impact on the world. Careers do not seem to be the solution, but the absence of careers also isn’t the answer. Just as the Alters, the reader will have to figure out for himself what makes you happy and gives a meaning to your time on earth.
emotional
funny
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
I do not envy comic novelists. Besides the challenges facing any novel writer, they have to elicit a smile, chuckle or smirk from their readers at regular intervals. Then - if and when they get it right - they face the risk of seeing their work dismissed as ‘(s)light’ fare. A case in point, in my opinion, was Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, which I greatly enjoyed and which I think really did deserve the Pulitzer, but which was slated in some quarters, including by friends and reviewers whose opinion I greatly respect.
It is therefore great news that a fresh talent has now joined the ranks of comic novelists. Andrew Ridker was born in 1991 (which makes me feel terribly old), and his debut novel The Altruists is published later this year. Admittedly, on the cynicism/bleakness scale, this novel is closer to Richard Ford than to Andrew Sean Greer, which might make it more palatable to the literati. Indeed, it’s already attracting glowing advance reviews. As for me, I admired most of it, although I find it harder to actually like it.
The protagonists of The Altruists are the Alters, a Jewish middle-class family from St Louis. The mother, Francine, haunts the novel, despite being dead for most of it. Indeed, it is her inheritance which serves as the catalyst of the plot. Incensed at the fact that her sixty-something professor husband Arthur has taken up a much younger lover whilst she is dying of cancer, Francine bequeaths a secret fortune to her two children, Ethan and Maggie. Faced with the prospect of losing his girlfriend and also his heavily mortgaged house, Arthur invites his children back to St Louis for a reconciliatory weekend, hoping to convince them to bail him out.
But Ethan and Maggie have their own problems. Ethan (whose homosexuality Arthur has never quite accepted) is out of a job, and is now living off his mother’s money in Brooklyn, whilst trying to sort out his messy love life. On her part, Maggie is a hard-headed would-be altruist, whose obsession with causes and ideals often leads her to actually overlook the needs of the people who surround her. Although Arthur’s plans seem to be failing miserably (but quite entertainingly for us readers), they do lead the Alters to come to term with their history and to understand that they are possible more like each other than they like to think.
To be honest, I found it hard to symphatize with any of the characters, who are complexly drawn but seem to have few, if any, redeeming features. If likable rogues exist, Arthur Alter is certainly not one of them. And his children are, frankly, chips off the old block. This ultimately detracted from my enjoyment of the novel. At the same time, however, there is much that is brilliant about The Altruists – it is an undeniably insightful work, it has some crisply humorous dialogue, and memorable set pieces. I particularly enjoyed the final showdown between the Alters and Arthur’s young lover, and the Zimbabwe episode feels like something out of Evelyn Waugh. If this debut is anything to go by, Ridker is certainly an author to look out for.
It is therefore great news that a fresh talent has now joined the ranks of comic novelists. Andrew Ridker was born in 1991 (which makes me feel terribly old), and his debut novel The Altruists is published later this year. Admittedly, on the cynicism/bleakness scale, this novel is closer to Richard Ford than to Andrew Sean Greer, which might make it more palatable to the literati. Indeed, it’s already attracting glowing advance reviews. As for me, I admired most of it, although I find it harder to actually like it.
The protagonists of The Altruists are the Alters, a Jewish middle-class family from St Louis. The mother, Francine, haunts the novel, despite being dead for most of it. Indeed, it is her inheritance which serves as the catalyst of the plot. Incensed at the fact that her sixty-something professor husband Arthur has taken up a much younger lover whilst she is dying of cancer, Francine bequeaths a secret fortune to her two children, Ethan and Maggie. Faced with the prospect of losing his girlfriend and also his heavily mortgaged house, Arthur invites his children back to St Louis for a reconciliatory weekend, hoping to convince them to bail him out.
But Ethan and Maggie have their own problems. Ethan (whose homosexuality Arthur has never quite accepted) is out of a job, and is now living off his mother’s money in Brooklyn, whilst trying to sort out his messy love life. On her part, Maggie is a hard-headed would-be altruist, whose obsession with causes and ideals often leads her to actually overlook the needs of the people who surround her. Although Arthur’s plans seem to be failing miserably (but quite entertainingly for us readers), they do lead the Alters to come to term with their history and to understand that they are possible more like each other than they like to think.
To be honest, I found it hard to symphatize with any of the characters, who are complexly drawn but seem to have few, if any, redeeming features. If likable rogues exist, Arthur Alter is certainly not one of them. And his children are, frankly, chips off the old block. This ultimately detracted from my enjoyment of the novel. At the same time, however, there is much that is brilliant about The Altruists – it is an undeniably insightful work, it has some crisply humorous dialogue, and memorable set pieces. I particularly enjoyed the final showdown between the Alters and Arthur’s young lover, and the Zimbabwe episode feels like something out of Evelyn Waugh. If this debut is anything to go by, Ridker is certainly an author to look out for.
This is an interesting portrayal of a family and its complicated relationships and dysfunction. Normally I would be put off by this type of book, and the frequent back & forth in time and narrators was at times a bit annoying, but in the end I saw the big picture and how all the pieces fit together; and how they got to where they are today; and the hope of atonement and forgiveness.
This is the millenial author's first novel. It shows good insight into the modern family. I look forward to his next venture.
I received this book from Penguin Book's as one of their last FirstReads offerings. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review new releases like this one. I will miss it.
This is the millenial author's first novel. It shows good insight into the modern family. I look forward to his next venture.
I received this book from Penguin Book's as one of their last FirstReads offerings. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review new releases like this one. I will miss it.