Amazon.com Review
"I was guilty enough already, guilty of the same old thing since grade school: guilty of having come from a family that had had the lack of foresight--the poor taste, really--to come down in the world. It was almost anti-American, losing money the way we had." So muses George Lenhart, the ruefully ironic narrator of
The Fundamentals of Play, Caitlin Macy's debut novel about money, class, and twentysomething relationships in the 1990s. Set in New England and New York City, this tale follows its characters from an old world of public schools and Maine summer houses, where the mention of money is vulgar but the lack of it even more so, into the brazen world of the new economy, where up-and-comers with no "name" are changing the rules of the game.
Before having come to work in the city, nothing much had threatened the sheltered and well-heeled lifestyles of the pedigreed Lenhart, his wealthy college roommate Chat Wethers, and their mutual childhood friend, the classically aloof Kate Goodenow. Nothing, that is, except for a shared (and silent) envy of Kate's high school boyfriend, Nick Beale, the poor "year-rounder" from the Maine coastal village turned boarding-school beneficiary turned pot-smoking dropout with exceptional sailing prowess and a passion for the Caribbean. Nick represents life lived without a script, and his story weaves in and out of the others' with a spontaneity that they so patently lack. His is a known spontaneity, though, and when the less definable one of skill, ambition, and new wealth--in the form of socially inept computer wizard Harry Lombardi--enters their sphere, the threads of the old world begin to fray. George looks on, bemused, as his class-conscious friends make careless (but transparently desperate) attempts to adjust their values, loyalties, and relationships.
Macy is adept at capturing the nuances of this last generation of aristocrats, caught between a desire for the past's fading gentility and the pressures of a faster game with a less rigid code of conduct. As George wryly admits, "It is hard to be reckless and still have one's shirts starched." Macy's language occasionally reflects the incongruous juxtaposition of these two worlds, mixing words like "foppishly" and "fleece" rather clumsily together, and her narrator speaks in a vernacular that seems far older than his mere 23 years, conjuring up visions of a Wharton-era New York rather than the city of the last decade. Her eye for odd details is deliciously surreptitious, however, and always viciously acute: she can paint sideline characters' entire personalities with one tidy turn of phrase, such as "Her face was tan--the whole party was filled with parents who had better tans than their children--and she wore pink lipstick that sat on her lips and beamed when they beamed." The Fundamentals of Play rides along on such observations, rewarding its readers with a glimpse into a (thankfully) disappearing world. --S. Ketchum
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
"The words never matter, in books or on dates," says George Lenhart, the bemused narrator of Macy's clever and thoroughly entertaining debut novel. "[I]t is the tone that survives." Long after the final page, Macy's tone, elegant and ironic, does survive, but so do her vibrant characters and their youthful hijinks. Set in the early '80s, just after the Pam Am Building became the MetLife, Macy's novel follows a small set of Ivy Leaguers as they make their way in New York City. At the heart of this set is Kate Goodenow, the anorexic rich girl whose sharpest critical word is "un-fun." Though suspect in other women's eyes, Kate is deeply alluring to men, from George to his college roommate Chatland Wethers to Harry Lombardi, the middle-class Dartmouth dropout who surprises everyone by making it big as a high-tech venture capitalist. George, whose family has lost its money but not its good name, seems to know that Kate will always remain beyond his reach. Indeed, wealthy, upper-crust Chat is unofficially engaged to her when the novel opens. Kate, however, somehow falls for Harry, who is short and stout and possesses a Long Island accent. If Harry's courtship of Kate turns her clubbish set on its head, it also rocks Harry's hometown buddy, Cara McLean, the girl who taught him how to smoke when they were in junior high, and she does her best to upset the relationship. The recurrent trope is play (playing roles, playing Hearts, simply playing), and the novel turns on just who is playing for keeps. While the shadow of Fitzgerald falls across this novel, Macy has the good sense to gently mock the congenitally wealthy and to allow hardworking Harry his financial success. The author's wit is sharp, her word play is keen and even as she lets George play one last bittersweet hand with Kate, Macy never betrays her clear-sighted recognition that old money is simply that: old. 6-city author tour. Film rights to Scott Rudin. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
