This Beautiful Life: A Novel (edition 2011)

The Bergamots are a typical upper-middle class family who recently relocated to New York City from Ithaca. There's Liz, a wound-way-too-tight, former art historian turned stay-at-home, semi-helicopter parent of a mom who has nothing better to do but e-stalk an ex-boyfriend's blog and obsess over whether she loves her kids too much.

She's married to Richard, whose prestigious and high-powered job at fictitious Astor University is the reason the Bergamot family relocated to New York City in the first place. There's adorable, spirited six year old Coco, whom Liz and Richard adopted from China and who has a coterie of friends at her swanky private school.

And then ... there's 15 year old Jake, just doing his best to fit in with his friends at his new school. He's on the cusp of the awkward beginnings of independence while trying to be cool and trying unsuccessfully to get the attention of Audrey, a girl he likes but who happens to be otherwise attached.

As I said, Jake's a typical 15 year old guy, with hormones firing on all cylinders and then some. So after he and 13 year old Daisy hook up at a party after too much beer, and he (rightfully so) tells her she's too young for such shenanigans, Daisy tries wooing him back by emailing him a video of herself in a compromising position. (Read between the lines here, folks, as I'm trying to avoid the spam and Google hits from getting even crazier than usual).

What does Jake do? Well, he's a little confused and perplexed and amused by said video ... but he does what any 15 year old boy would do: he forwards it to his best friend.

Who forwards it to his twin brother. Who forwards it to his best friend. And then, well, you can guess what happens. What poor naive Daisy (who is neither poor nor naive) thought would only be for Jake's eyes winds up going viral - and it's all Jake's fault.

This Beautiful Life focuses on the aftermath and the consequences that occur as a result of the video's explosion into cyberspace, and the destructive effect it has on the Bergamot family. Because of one mistake and one split-second decision, each person's sense of security and what is truly a "beautiful life" (this family doesn't want for anything, believe you me) is shaken. It's a compelling premise, and even though the novel is set in 2003 when all this was still uncharted territory, it resonates with parents and anyone who cares for kids because nine years later, we've seen where this Pandora's Box has led.

That being said, as much as I thought I would like this book (and wanted to), I felt that This Beautiful Life had too many issues in regard to the undeveloped characters, the writing style, and the plot. Let's start with the characters, shall we?

They could not have possibly been more stereotypical. I'll be blunt here: I'm tired of "yummy mummies" (an adjective/noun combo special that I cannot stand) whose playdates with their adorable cherubs consist of going to tea party sleepovers at The fucking Plaza Hotel and who whine about the headmistress of the school where their husbands are "legacy" alums, and how hard their goddamn lives are because they can't manage to decide if their kid should be taking ballet or African dance lessons, and who bitch about the cost of organic frozen strawberries. I hate people like that - which means that in reading This Beautiful Life, Liz Bergamot and her so-called friends were not people I cared to spend much time with.

(I do think the setting of 2003 worked against the novel in that aspect, at least for me. In these recessionary times when so many people continue to struggle, reading about people with lifestyles like that is kind of a turnoff to me.)

Liz and Richard's reactions to Daisy's video and their behavior in the aftermath of their son receiving and forwarding it struck me as ... maddening. I get wanting to protect your kid and being angry at the other party, and I know all too many parents carry the mantle of "my kid can do no wrong." I understand that. But there's absolutely no acceptance of personal responsibility here and no culpability on the part of the parents, no self-examination of what within themselves or within their family led to this. They don't go into counseling; they barely discuss the incident at all. They just disintegrate into themselves, which is sad and perhaps a realistic reaction, but a missed opportunity, in my view.

Not to mention, Richard's reaction as a father while watching this video of a 13 year old prancing to Beyonce was enough to give me the heebie-jeebies:

"And for all the video's dismal raunch, its tawdriness, for all its sexual immaturity and unknowingness, there is something about the way this girl has revealed herself, the way that she has offered herself, truly stripped herself bare, that is brave and powerful and potent and ridiculous and self-immolating and completely nuts. It speaks to him. Is he crazy? He feels crazier in this moment than he has ever felt in his life. He feels touched by it. And because the video is all of these things and more, because in some way it is truly the literal essence of what it means to be naked, because this Daisy makes herself completely vulnerable and open and 100 percent exposed, it also breaks Richard's heart." (pg. 118)

Stop right there and get thee to the nearest psychologist, dude. THE GIRL IS ALL OF 13 and making a suggestive video to get attention from a boy! I'm sorry, but there's nothing brave or empowering about that and the fact that this Dad is trying to convince me as a reader that there IS ... well, that's the sort of thing that makes my personal Creepmeter turn purple.

The overall writing style of was, in my opinion, somewhat bland and at times, confusing. For example, while waiting in their lawyer's office, Richard realizes that the lawyer

"holds [his] son's future in his hands. This is a little like waiting for a neurosurgeon, Richard thinks, and then stops the thought, blocks it. The analogy is too terrible and too frightening." (pg. 107).

Huh? Why? What am I missing here? (Richard's father died when Richard was young, but of a heart attack, not of a brain tumor or something, which would make this more logical.) There are several other head-scratching, what-the-? instances where this sort of thing occurred, so many things left unexplained, the ending rushed and seemingly tacked on as an afterthought. Even the symbolism and connection to The Great Gatsby seemed to be gratuitous, thrown in there as a tangent, when it could have been much stronger and emphasized.

Speaking of gratuitous, within the writing itself there are too many phrases and scenes that seem included for the shock value factor. This might sound a little hypocritical coming from me, as I fully admit to dropping an f-bomb or two on occasion, but Schulman's prose in this novel tends to include such off-putting phrases like "In Ithaca, where they lived pretty fucking happily the last ten years ..." (pg. 5) and nine pages later, "She reveled in the privacy. That was life in Ithaca, and it did not suck." (pg. 14). There's a description on page 175 of Liz "in yoga pants, a wife-beater." (What's wrong with saying a tank top?) Again, I'm no prude, but I found these word choices unnecessary.

Ultimately, in my opinion, I felt that there were too many instances throughout this novel where either the writing style or the characters' actions detracted from what promised to be a truly provocative story, for all the right reasons.

The one exception was with the character of Jake. I thought that Schulman captured Jake and his peers very well. Their conversations and actions, their angst and their desire to fit in, felt authentic to me. Even though I don't have a 15 year old, my work brings me into contact with many of them and the descriptions and the dialogue seemed real. It almost made me wonder if This Beautiful Life would have worked better - or have been more powerful - as more of a young adult focused novel. As it is, it seems to be one targeted for a parental audience, one that would strike fear into any parent's heart that this could happen to any of us.

But I think it misses the mark on that because these characters are too unrelatable personally and their 2003 lifestyle too distant from the 2012 reality that so many of us have. I can't imagine living anywhere near the kind of lifestyle that these people do. They're nothing like me. So if the theme is about the disintegration of a family after such an event and them wringing their hands over what they potentially stand to lose, then I'm not going to be able to identify with that because so many people have lost everything, you know? I know I'm harping on that, but I truly could not get past that aspect of this novel.

We also know much more now in terms of sexting and the legal ramifications, and it's hard to place oneself back almost a decade ago. But if the message is one of a cautionary one, one directed to a teenage audience, maybe that would have been better reinforced if the story itself had been told through Jake's eyes only ... just like the video was meant to be.

I wished I liked This Beautiful Life more than I did. Still, I'm grateful to TLC Book Tours for including me on the tour and for Harper Perennial for sending me a copy of the book in exchange for my (probably all too) honest review, for which I wasn't compensated in any way.
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Ifound this book to be rather slow. Fifteen year old Jake Bergamot recieves and then sends an explicit video that an eight grade girl sends him and the video goes viral.The scandal that ensues threatens the happiness of the entire family. ( )

A book for todays generation that deals with what happens when a teenage girl forwards a sexually explicit email attachement of herself to a guy she is keen on. He without thinking forwards it on to a friend and soon it is all over the Internet. The book deals with how it affects the son who received it, his six year old sister, and his parents and their relationship.. They have moved into New York from a country area, and the husband is much more interested in his career and making money than caring for his family. His wife has given up her career to come to New York and is trying to nurture and support the family. This book , to me,. coud have been better. It promised so much. The beginning was set up well but I felt the end was rushed. There were parts where you got a glimpse of what it could have been, and those parts were moving However it did succeed in making me think about this issue that todays young generation faces. ( )

I was disappointed in this book. The premise should have made for an interesting story but it just didn't Get executed well. After a slow start, the central event, a sexting email from an 8th grade girl to the boy she has a crush on that goes viral, is presented well. Then, the effects on the family...just doesn't tie together very well. I think this could have been done better and kind of wish the author could have a "do-over." Doesn't live up to its potential. ( )

Once, the Bergamots were the darlings of the Manhattan jet set. Transplanted there by virtue of a job offer Richard Bergamot could not refuse, they packed up and left their happy, small town, suburban lifestyle for the fast pace of the city and a future of financial triumphs. Richard loved his new job. Liz loved her new found lifestyle of the “rich and famous”. She gave up her ambitions in favor of her husband’s achievements. Both have Ph.D’s. Both appear to be interested first, in the world of Botox and vacations, rather than their children. They live in Charles Murray’s bubble world of the established, mixing primarily with their own kind and moving in their own circle of comfort and prosperity.
Regarding the move, there is no evidence that the needs, or effect of the move on the children, were given much consideration. This move would provide them all with many creature comforts and advantages which would make the move worthwhile. The subtle side effects of this move on their behavior, after being uprooted and placed in a cauldron of anonymity, so different from the warmth and community of their old neighborhood is largely ignored. Everyone is too busy enjoying the affluence.
The Bergamots are currently living in a temporary apartment provided by the University that hired Richard, until the school’s new upscale residences are completed. Richard is senior executive vice chancellor of the Astor University of the City of New York. Richard’s ambition is to take a blighted area and turn it into a state of the art campus for the university, creating jobs and affordable housing at the same time. This sounds noble until you find out that Richard has helped the neighborhood become more blighted by buying the parking lot that used to service the area, refusing to renew leases among other things, thereby insuring its decline in order to help guarantee the project’s approval.
One evening, Liz takes Coco, their adopted Chinese daughter, to a clandestine, child’s birthday party, at the Plaza Hotel, where the mothers proceed to drink themselves into a stupor, and Coco proceeds to bounce from bed to bed for most of the night. Liz returns home exhausted and with a hangover. She neither notices the discomfort of her son Jake, from his previous night out, nor is she in any condition to help him even if she had acknowledged it. The book is a study in parents who, from the outside, appear to hover around their children, and yet, in reality, they neglect to pay much attention to the more salient aspects of parenting, like the teaching of values and ethics. Children learn from the example and often, perhaps unwittingly, the parental example is often shallow and mercenary because the parents are unaware of how closely they are being watched.
By and large, Richard is too busy climbing, placing one hand over the other on the ladder of success, and Liz is too busy trying to fit in and be cool, like the other mothers, enjoying the high life, going to the best restaurants, the newest shows, enjoying the latest fashions, to realize when things subtly start to go awry. The lifestyle they enjoy seems extremely superficial. However, the children are provided with every advantage, even if they are somewhat neglected when it comes to moral development, and the finer nuances of their occasional behavioral aberrations, which gave evidence to their somewhat troubled adjustment, often went unnoticed. Coco, only 6 years old, is a typically, if not also overactive, mischievous young child. Jake is 15, and a victim of his puberty and his hormones, which when coupled with the change in his environment, confuse him and offer him no ideal opportunities for explanations or means to address his concerns. The friends he has chosen appear to be very different from the boy Jake used to be, a boy who would prefer to be back in his old neighborhood, riding his bike and experiencing the wind blowing through his hair as he rode downhill with his eyes closed, rather than standing on a corner smoking weed and drinking beer, illegally. He is essentially a good boy, a naïve young man, trying to make his way in the world of the teenager, fraught with all the dangers that face them, chief among them being the internet and the lack of restraint often exhibited by kids because they simply don’t know better.
On the evening that his dad works late and his mom parties, Jake also looks for entertainment. He is being trusted to travel on his own and come home on his own since the parents are otherwise going to be occupied. When the party he intended to attend with his friends is canceled, he crashes another, and after the experience there, his world, forever after, is changed. He meets Daisy there and they sort of hook up. He rejects her, in the end, and in the morning he receives a very lewd, sexually explicit video from her. Instead of deleting it, in his shock and with immature naïveté and confusion, he foolishly forwards it to a friend, hoping for some input. He has no one to go to for guidance, unfortunately, or this would not have happened. Of course, the video goes viral, and it is the beginning of the end for Jake, his family, some of his friends, and most of all, for Daisy.
How will this tragedy be resolved? Where do you place the blame? Is it Daisy’s fault since she, with premeditation, sent the video which has now been classified as pornography? Is it Jake’s, although he never asked for it and was shocked by it, because he sent it onward? The repercussions are monumental. Liz falls into an emotional decline. Richard loses his position and has to take a forced leave. Jake is suspended. Daisy is shamed but signing autographs. She has become famous. Jake is somewhere between a murderer and a martyr on the scale of guilt. Is this tragedy the fault of society, parenting, affluence, arrogance? Will the victims learn from this experience or continue to make the same mistakes, pursuing the wrong, often selfish goals?
This is not a wonderful piece of literature but this book will give rise to many discussions on cyber-bullying, arrogance, the internet, political correctness, diversity, “blending” of cultures, class advantages or disadvantages, the lack of rules and proper discipline in modern homes, the effects of neglect and lack of parental involvement, the dangers wrought by too much money and the dangers wrought by the lack of it.
I would give this novel three stars except for the fact that I think it is more important as a tool for discussion than for scholarship, so it warrants four. If it leads to meaningful conversation and solutions, to current parenting issues and juvenile behavior or lack thereof, with or without the involvement of cyberspace, it will be more worthwhile than its value as literature.
***As a postscript, I am wondering if people reject this book because they do not want to hear the message or face their own complicity in shaping events like this? We have just come off a very contentious election in which the President, Vice President and his administration conducted an angry and not always truthful campaign, ignoring the dishonest and horrible emotional effect of the messages sent about their opponents, and yet we restored them to office. We can surely say that both sides did some of the same but studies will and have shown, that the left was far more favored by the media and was far more negative and damaging than the right in their behavior. Why do we approve of this behavior and honor it? Do the means justify any ends? ( )