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claudiaqreads 's review for:
The Latecomer
by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Great writing elevates this fairly unoriginal tale of a privileged but messy and unlikable family that doesn’t get along and finds itself drifted completely apart. Obviously though, the writing is not quite good enough to ignore the idea that I have read this before or to make me wonder why I should care about them not getting along in the first place.
The Latecomer follows a set of triplets born to a rich Jewish couple in New York who grow up without every really getting along or being a family. One struggles with their sexuality, one struggles with their religion, and one struggles with their political beliefs and all struggle to be decent people. When the kids are graduating, their mother upon finding out that her husband is cheating on her and probably going to leave with his new family decides to use the last egg from the IVF treatment saved from 18 years ago, essentially making a fourth twin but born 18 years later. When Phoebe is old enough to realize the mess of her family she works to try and fix it.
I will repeat that the writing of this is really well done and I will definitely check out the author’s other novels which I have been intrigued about. Despite being very slow with the ‘plot’ of the story not kicking in until at least half way through, I never felt like quitting. It kept me engaged with the smaller segments of action that each sibling or parent was going through. But when I stepped back and looked at the overall picture, I couldn’t really bring myself to be that interested.
The characters do in fact, grow (with one exception). Except this entirely happens off stage. We follow the kids while they are in their first year of college and generally being assholes then it skips 16 plus years. Where two of them have settled and smoothed out the rough edges we saw previously and one of them has leaned even more into them. Somehow, the character that hasn’t developed at all, gets the exact same treatment as the other two. I’m not even trying to get political here (though it is hard with this character being a literal commentator for Fox News) but there is no development from him or growth. Yet he gets the same ending. Its very odd and a weird message. I can’t imagine liberals like me will enjoy this character being accepted as such with zero growth and I can’t imagine conservatives would like that their ‘representative’ character is just an asshole in general without including his political views. So who was this book for? I have no real idea.
Everything felt all wrapped up in a tidy bow that felt undeserved and un-journeyed for us as readers.
I did actually enjoy the one character’s exploration of religion. I found this super interesting that someone who lacked a sense of family and community attaches themselves to a religion (LDS) that has such strong bonds. It was actually a really interesting emotional journey that I felt I understood more than anything else. I also loved the exploration of religion through art that he had. He did turn out to be my favorite character and the most interesting one to me.
There really was interesting parts and segments but they sure did make it hard to really care about them.
Overall, really well written but generally a miss for me.
The Latecomer follows a set of triplets born to a rich Jewish couple in New York who grow up without every really getting along or being a family. One struggles with their sexuality, one struggles with their religion, and one struggles with their political beliefs and all struggle to be decent people. When the kids are graduating, their mother upon finding out that her husband is cheating on her and probably going to leave with his new family decides to use the last egg from the IVF treatment saved from 18 years ago, essentially making a fourth twin but born 18 years later. When Phoebe is old enough to realize the mess of her family she works to try and fix it.
I will repeat that the writing of this is really well done and I will definitely check out the author’s other novels which I have been intrigued about. Despite being very slow with the ‘plot’ of the story not kicking in until at least half way through, I never felt like quitting. It kept me engaged with the smaller segments of action that each sibling or parent was going through. But when I stepped back and looked at the overall picture, I couldn’t really bring myself to be that interested.
The characters do in fact, grow (with one exception). Except this entirely happens off stage. We follow the kids while they are in their first year of college and generally being assholes then it skips 16 plus years. Where two of them have settled and smoothed out the rough edges we saw previously and one of them has leaned even more into them. Somehow, the character that hasn’t developed at all, gets the exact same treatment as the other two. I’m not even trying to get political here (though it is hard with this character being a literal commentator for Fox News) but there is no development from him or growth. Yet he gets the same ending. Its very odd and a weird message. I can’t imagine liberals like me will enjoy this character being accepted as such with zero growth and I can’t imagine conservatives would like that their ‘representative’ character is just an asshole in general without including his political views. So who was this book for? I have no real idea.
Everything felt all wrapped up in a tidy bow that felt undeserved and un-journeyed for us as readers.
I did actually enjoy the one character’s exploration of religion. I found this super interesting that someone who lacked a sense of family and community attaches themselves to a religion (LDS) that has such strong bonds. It was actually a really interesting emotional journey that I felt I understood more than anything else. I also loved the exploration of religion through art that he had. He did turn out to be my favorite character and the most interesting one to me.
There really was interesting parts and segments but they sure did make it hard to really care about them.
Overall, really well written but generally a miss for me.