Life is nothing but a house of cards.
The Bergamots are an average American family. Richard, an executive at a large New York City University and Liz, a PhD-turned-soccer-mom are parents to the societal perfection that is the two child household; one boy and one girl. Attractive, intelligent, and seemingly on the rise. This family has just made the transition from sleepy college town middle-class to upwardly mobile with a Manhattan apartment and exclusive private school for the kiddies.
While it can be said that everyone is just getting settled into their roles in this new world. Each member of the family seems to know their place. Until fifteen year old Jake forwards an email. An email that goes viral. An email containing inappropriate and potentially damning content. A single click akin to the flick of a finger it would take to bring down a house of cards.
Review
I had to sit with this book for a few days after I finished it. I had one of my teachers come to me, book in hand, requesting that I do the read. This teacher had been browsing the Top 100 Notable Books of 2011 and picked this book from the one sentence summary:
THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE. By Helen Schulman. (Harper/HarperCollins, $24.99.) A family’s Manhattan life comes apart when their 15-year-old forwards a sexually explicit video made for him, unsolicited, by a girl two years younger.
Yeah, if you didn’t get the picture from the booktalk above, this one’s heavy.
Why you want to sit with this one for so long after you read; why your mind will percolate with thoughts and ideas isn’t because of the sex tape (though, that one’s like a train wreck you can’t look away from) nor, is it about the actual ramifications of the video going viral. This book expertly lays an average American life before the reader. It’s a life with real people, real troubles, and real hope. Then with one move of a young boy’s finger Schulman collapses their world.
You’ll read on in the beginning waiting for the legal fallout. You come into this read fueled by news headlines and lifetime movies featuring underage children indulging in sexual games most adults don’t care to play. And, every one of those stories seems to end entangled in courtroom battles or suicide. We’re a society that expects the sensational. Instead, you’ll find what psychologically sticks with you are the truths this tale points out about our lives. For example, discussions of men vs. women. Jake himself ponders the ethics of making-out with Daisy, pre-video:
“His mom was like stuck back in the seventies, all her crap about feminism and the way girls dressed these days…but what if the girl wants the hookup? If she begs for it? Did his mom ever think about that?
It never would have occurred to him to hook up with Daisy if she hadn’t thrown herself at him.” (67-68 Hard Back ed.)
And before you have the knee jerk reaction to that statement above see below what happens only 10 pages later:
“Jake had been heading out of the building and toward the gym…still pretending to himself like it had never happened…when he saw Daisy Cavanaugh for the first time ever in school. He saw her down the hall.
She was autographing baseball bats.” (79, Hard Back ed.)
To fully understand the ramifications of the quote above you must know that Daisy uses a toy baseball bat as a prop in her video. In ways that Shusterman allows you to imagine all the more graphically due to her fade-to-black scene.
“She was famous now. He’d made her famous. She was autographing the bats and smiling a big, broad, winning smile.” (80, Hard Back ed.)
The mother becomes obsessed with the video, the younger sister begins to imitate the sexual dancing that she sees all around her. Even the paragon of intelligent beauty that is Jake’s crush reveals her own thoughts about female sexuality and they’re far harsher than Jake’s rosy crush on her has led us to expect. It’ll make you think about what influences us today as women…and what the men in our lives expect from us as well.
I could have done without portions of Liz’s (the mother’s) character. She’s one of those used-to-be-smart-but-was-a-bit-lost-so-she-had-kids-now-what mothers recent literature is so fond of. She fits the cliché from artistic but useless PhD to smoking pot in the bathroom to face the overwhelming ordeal that is an elementary school recital. Liz is, basically, that woman who has hit a turning point in her life and looks back at her youth and sees a haze of hope and missed opportunities, rather than what was truly a lack of passion and indecision.
Women like this annoy me. And they scare me. Because if they’re this prevalent in literature…could I become one of them? Yet another sticking point of the novel.
At the end you’ll circle back. You’ll stare at each character and try to find the mistake. The lost moment that would have held Jake’s finger from clicking send. Find the scene when the appropriate word or hug could have held this family together. Because trust me. After you read Daisy’s older point of view you’ll see that the Bergamots are an average family, and one that is completely unique, at the same time.
Rating: 4.5/5 A masterfully realized story of social issues and a family; held from perfection by a tired characterization of the mother.
i’m on the fence. i don’t know if i can handle another emotionally charged read right now. my heart is still recovering from a few books i just finished. maybe sometime down the line… it does sound interesting.
It was good, I felt like I had to rate it highly…but probably not a “must read”. Does that make sense?
Your reviews are always so beautiful. I need you to tutor me.
The thought of this book makes me sad is so many ways. Thank goodness my youthful transgressions weren’t caught on anything other than polaroids. But it is definitely the weakness of character, lack of self-respect, and just plain poor decisions that makes me shake my head. I must read this book. Thanks for sharing.
Polaroids…you don’t say…lol. Just kidding. This was a really well done book. So much more than it seemed on the surface.