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Loading... This Beautiful Life: A Novel (edition 2011)by Helen Schulman
Work InformationThis Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Read this in one gulp. Very good indeed. Closely observed. Chilling. ( ) I didn't get what I was expecting from this book but in the end I think Ms. Schulman is a gifted writer/storyteller who crafted a very good story but it was more focuses on the main character and what at times felt like her whining than the story of her son. I just couldn't relate or even like the main character's but I did enjoy some aspects of the story and overall I enjoyed the book. Much-hyped yarn about Internet sex scandal at tony UES prep school and its devastating consequences for a formerly picture-book family turns out to be riddled with stereotypes and lazy writing. Schulman was canny enough to pick an eminently book club-ready premise for her novel, but is unable to transcend her setting, which has been more crisply skewered elsewhere, or her characters, who are so bland and self-absorbed that they practically evaporate. Hard for me to believe I'm reading the same book as all those reviewers; maybe there was some kind of weird book-jacket mixup at the warehouse? no reviews | add a review
When the Bergamots move from a comfortable upstate college town to New York City, they are not quite sure how they will adapt, or what to make of the strange new world of well-to-do Manhattan. Soon, though, Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying young Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school. But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an email in his in-box from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, and scared, a jumble of adolescent emotion, he forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend. Within hours, it has gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world. The ensuing scandal threatens to shatter the Bergamots' sense of security and identity, and, ultimately, their happiness. They are a good family faced with bad choices, and how they choose to react, individually and at one another's behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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