This discussion originally appeared in Beach Read Book Club , a limited-run newsletter where New York staff discuss the season’s buzziest books alongside our readers. To be the first to join the discourse, sign up here . Welcome to the first meeting of New York ’s 2024 Beach Read Book Club .
Our reading group — Vulture writer Jason P. Frank , features writer Emily Gould , Vulture senior TV editor Julie Kosin , senior social-media editor Zach Schiffman , critic Kathryn VanArendonk , and Cut culture writer Cat Zhang — is excited to discuss Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Long Island Compromise with you. Today, we’re talking about the book’s prologue and our initial impressions.
Emily Gould: I have to admit that I was dreading reading this book. I wrote a review of Fleishman Is in Trouble that was against the critical consensus back in the day. I felt like there was this trauma at the center — Rachel’s medical rape — that the author didn’t really fully contend with and just laid it there on the page and then let the reader make what they would of it.
In this book, I feel like Brodesser-Akner maybe overcorrected and was like, “Here’s the central trauma, and here’s how it affected a generation of people’s lives,” and made that be the overarching theme of the book rather than a nugget buried in between all these other piles of maximalist details and descriptions. In a way, I think that is good. It represents artistic growth, which is cool to see in a novelis.