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The first few pages of Long Island Compromise, the second book by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, have all the tension and intrigue of a gripping opening sequence to a TV show. It’s March 1980. Carl Fletcher is the owner of a pollution-spewing polystyrene factory established by his Holocaust survivor father. It has made the Fletchers “extraordinarily, absurdly” rich, even in the prosperous Long Island neighbourhood of Middle Rock. Carl strides down his drive, ready for another day at work. Until, that is, his world fades to black as he is bundled into his car by two kidnappers, who imprison him in a cupboard for days while attempting to extract ransom money from his wife. Flash forward three decades or so, and the aftershocks of this event will “play out riotously in the soul and on the body” of the Fletchers and their three children in the decades to come. It’s certainly an unenviable inheritance.
