Customer Reviews

This Beautiful Life: A Novel (P.S.)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

No matter how well-intentioned we are - and the couple in this novel, the Bergamots do mean well -- modern life has fresh ways of making things go awry for couples and families. I wound up caring so much about each of them, vulnerable and strong in different ways and think you will too. What happens when a very in-love couple moves with their two children --an active, adopted six year old from China and a 15 year old sensitie son Jake -- from comfortable Ithaca into New York City - for the man's enticing new job?

Even though the cover description sounded like the story could be poignant, and it is, Schulman's subtle, deft writing pulled me in from page one. This family of fully fleshed out characters, happy, enjoying life, can be hit by one innocent mistake, and the reverberations affect them all. The events ring true in this richly detailed story where literally one move sets things in motion, yet there are foreshadowed moments. No part of this seem contrived, rather it seemed like something that could happen to many other middle-class, perhaps upwardly mobile couples. Thank goodness for long plane flights, said the woman on my left (lives in Manhattan) who began reading my book when I was done. I will look for Schulman's next books to read

I kept waiting and waiting for "This Beautiful Life" to reach its peak. The story hinges on an event that is described within the first few pages of the book and there is very little suspense after that.

The family - Richard, Liz, Jake & Coco - described in this book just don't seem to react too much. Jake, after forwarding a pornographic video, is suspended from school. He stays home during his suspension along with his stay at home mother and his father, taking "family time". They hardly seem to speak of the incident, neither parent seems want to deal with the event & the consequences, and they seem to just be in a holding pattern for most of the book.

Liz, more than anyone, seems bogged down by everything both in and missing from her life. "It was heaven really to be alone in that cramped apartment. And yet, as she had felt almost every day since they'd moved in, when she came back from dropping Coco off at school, or yoga, or errands, or coffee, Liz took one look at her messy home and was overwhelmed by how much there was to do and how little she wanted to do it. Finding that first step into an amorphous day, a day without bones, was always the hardest."

I do like that phrase, though - "a day without bones".

Underneath the uncertain lethargy of most of the characters, there is a message about way the role of parents has changed in this modern world. "(Richard's dad)...didn't focus on him, he didn't coddle him, he didn't help him with his homework or take his emotional temperature three times a day or do any of the things Richard and Lizzie do now, along with eating and breathing, as a way of life. Dad loved his boys within reason. Dad's was a reasonable, conditional love, the condition being that Richard kept his nose clean, that he always did his best, that he conducted himself with honor."

But in general, the story just kind of meanders along, until finally, just near the end, something happens that slaps the family in the face and wakes them from their stupor.

I suppose what kept me at a distance in this book was description of the emotions the characters were feeling...we were told they felt things...but those feelings stayed firmly on the page & didn't spark any reaction on my part.

It seems as if the story of "This Beautiful Life" was almost over before it began.

It was an interesting idea for a story: big, digital-age consequences of the kind of thing that in the past would have been easily forgotten or ignorable. The New York Times said it was a book that needed to be written. But when fifteen-year-old Jake upsets a precociously obnoxious thirteen-year-old girl and she responds in a stupid, self-desructive (though not very) and vicious way, a series of relatively unremarkable events ensues that allow Jake's mother and her clone-family to plough through tediously observed emotional tantrums that get rather dull rather quickly. Jake's dad, Richard, is driven by a wannabe-neurotic middle-aged woman's thought patterns and so is his son. Everything comes back to what she feels about things, as if she has imagined everyone else into existence.

This is the problem with the book - the characters don't convince you that they really exist. The school that is the backdrop to events, with its preening pompousness, rings fairly true although it would have been interesting to explore that angle more deeply: a school stands to lose a great deal from such an incident, and the cardboard cutout staff could have added some substance had they been given the chance.

Overall, this book is a disappointment. The characters lack depth, the story meanders nowhere and the surprise ending feels purposeless.

I found the characters one-dimensional. I did not care what happened to them. The author seemed to be distracted while she wrote it. The ending was disjointed, like she finished it suddenly. All in all a very flat read.

"This Beautiful Life" by Helen Schulman is about a New York couple and their two children who are living a decidedly unbeautiful life. Richard and Liz Bergamot (loved this last name, should have taken it as a warning on how pretentious this book is) are attempting to create a loving family in a community swimming with uber educated, extremely beautiful, alarmingly rich and snarky people. The plot centers around a highly controversial and disgusting internet incident. I don't want to elaborate much further on this because at 222 pages this story would be easy to spoil.The family spirals into the depths of despair and depression over this...which I found pathetically unresourceful and unlikely considering their status. Absolutely everyone in this novel is totally cool and "hip" (the author's silly word, not mine) even the kindergartener. In one scene, Liz, the "Mom", describing a play date for daughter "Coco", tells us "sometimes when she was exhausted and sick of writing the script of their activities, she'd resort to popping in a video, cracking a beer and watching the girls zone." Reeaally Liz?? Is this the way hip and artsy Moms are doing it these days? My "suds level" kept rising exponentially all the way through the turning of these, cynicism dripping, pages. The old gag reflex presenting its self frequently as well. There is very little character development here and the ending is completely incohesive.

I selected this book upon reading a reccomendation that lightly compared the writing to that of the magnificent, Lionel Shriver. If you enjoy the genre, Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is captivating. In "Kevin" the over writing and the pages literally bursting with words become part of the very compelling protagonist,and rather unreliable narrator, Kevin's mother. No comparison here, unfortunately. Helen Schulman gives us the oh so clever word salad without making us care about her one dimensional characters.

If you enjoy Jodi Picoult, I do not, you may like this one. But while Picoult's frequent offerings usually feature a relevant topic of interest dropped into a silly, formulaic, narrative...she extensively researches her subject matter...not so with Schulman. I reccomend that you skip this one....

My favorite kinds of books are those that focus on a family during a trying time that stresses their family dynamics. While it seems simplistic, this is a lot harder than it appears. Many authors find themselves stuck in a story with no way out and rely on cliches or unrealistic endings. True authors place their characters in emotional crisis and watch them work their way out. This is the tactic that Helen Schulman takes in her new novel "This Beautiful Life".

Lizzie is a happy housewife of two children living in New York City in 2003. She holds a PhD in art history and yearns to return her family to Ithaca, New York where they lived before coming to NYC. However, her husband Richard was offered a job that he simply could not refuse which cause the family to be uprooted. They seem to be living an idyllic life until her son, Jake, is caught in the middle of a sex scandal. Suddenly all of their lives are turned upside down as Lizzie begins to question her role as an effective parent and stay at home mom. Richard takes on the notion that he must do anything to save his family, while Jake is guilt-ridden and confused. Together, they try to overcome this event and continue on as a family. Unfortunately, some situations put even the most stable family at risk.

This plot has certainly be done before, most recently by Anita Shreve in her novel "Testimony". It is for this reason that I wanted to read Schulman's book as I was interested in her take on such a traumatic event. I have to say that in just about 200 pages, she outdoes on previous novels written on the topic. Her characters are dynamic, every changing, and real. The setting is the perfect backdrop for such an event and the constant yearning that the characters have to return to their previous life in upstate New York is almost palatable. The dichotomy between the two "kinds" of New York is extremely interesting and well developed in the novel.

Though the book is physically slim, it packs in quite a punch. Ever family member is given time to be heard and understood by the reader. The third person narrative gives the audience a front row view of the story while allowing the reader to remain objective. It is clear that Schulman constructed the novel this way to prove that there is no winner in situations such as this. Overall, this is a fantastic read that I recommend to all. It shows the lows that people can hit without even knowing and the repercussions that can ripple for decades.

THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE is definitely a contemporary story about parenting, scandal, and the interference of the world of technology into the privacy of our homes every day. While I enjoyed the story, I was not taken with the author's writing style in general. For me, her main characters felt flat, especially the teenage boy. While she wrote of his agony and guilt over his involvement in the scandal, the true heart and feelings of the boy just didn't come through. The ending felt as if the publisher called and gave the author a deadline, and the book was rushed to meet that date. It left me feeling that the story of the affected family remained untold. Overall, I just found the book unsatisfying and emotionally disjointed. The story line offered so many possibilities, but the reader just never gets to experience them.

I couldn't pass up watching a good train wreck (or listening to one -- audio book has an excellent narrator). Nothing sparks your (our) interests like a good scandal.

Fifteen year old Jake does what the majority of boys his age would do, and forwards along a pornographic video made for him by an attention-starved, spoiled but abandond, thirteen year old girl named Daisy from an insanely wealthy family. It leads to catastrophe. For Jake and his family. The video goes viral and Jake is kicked out of school and his straight-and-narrow father, Richard, who seems to have never made a mistake in life himself, is forced to step down from his high profile position lobbying for a new development because of his association with the now very public scandal. Along with his doting and defeated mother Liz, Jake and his father are forced to hide in their apartment together, settling in for a long bout of reflection. The highly disciplined and accomplished father realizes he's never had the courage to take any big risks in life and has hid behind an intense regiment of hard work and fortitude. He feels helpless not being able to control the crisis at hand. Jakes pot-smoking mother searches for an escape and retreats to the very medium that disrupted their lives in the first place -- the Internet. She stays up all night long watching porno (yes this part is odd) and anxiously awaits the next much too candid and explicit blog-post from her self-absorbed former boyfriend in college. Jake realizes his life, along with the world around him have changed and will never be the same.

As juicy and close-by as the plot sounds, it didn't make my drive to work any shorter like I hoped it would. The plot seems to bog down about half way through and never really picks up again. Liz's obsession with watching Daisy's video is hard to believe and I find it odd that Daisy is treated like a victim (maybe even the hero) in the story. If Jake had sent a video of himself to Daisy then she would have hardly suffered the same persecution, and I can't imagine that he would have been allowed to stay in school while Daisy got kicked out for sharing the video. Then again, maybe that's something we should think about. When a scandal breaks the public has to find someone to injure and the real perpetrator of this exciting disaster has already hurt herself.

I came to this book with great anticipation based on reviews, but after reading it I feel it would have been MUCH better as a short story; there's not enough substance to the story for a novel. Also, the conclusion just came out of NOWHERE. I didn't care about either parent, esp. the mother. I'm disappointed, but glad I only read the library's copy. I wish the author greater success in her next work.

I was very disappointed in this book. The premise sounded interesting...the privileged teenaged son of a privileged couple receives a video via e-mail from a younger girl. The video is made to show the boy that she will do anything, sexually, for him. He does what any teen would do...he forwards it to his best friend...who forwards it...and within days it is all over the world. I DID like Jake, the teenaged son, the best of any of the characters. However, to me he was the only truly developed character. His anxiety about being new to his private school, his hopeless crush on a classmate, and his reaction to all the chaos that ensues after he forwards the video were the best parts of this book. The parents are not interesting, and certainly not credible. The mom, who has a PhD, still has to get high just to face picking up her little girl at school. The author spent a lot of words on the father...but he was never a realistic character to me. I don't know why the little girl, Coco, was even in the book. I was hoping to find a new author to enjoy. Sadly, I didn't.