A Fortunate Age: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rakoff's debut novel is a ponderous, meandering and nostalgic portrait of a postcollegiate group of Gen-Xers awkwardly navigating weddings, pregnancies, betrayals and funerals in pre- and post-9/11 New York City. At the center of the group is Sadie Peregrine, a rising book editor who is having trouble reconciling her personal and professional ambitions. Rounding out her circle is Lil, a depressed and flailing scholar; Emily, a starving actress; Tal, a successful actor; Beth, a would-be English prof; and Dave, an enigmatic musician and Beths ex-boyfriend. The writing is episodic and relies heavily on exposition, and many character interactions and plot developments occur off the page and are referred to only indirectly. At her best, Rakoff offers a carefully studied glimpse into her characters minds. Too often, though, the large cast and the hopscotch chronology come at the expense of narrative tension, of which there isn't much. Thirty-somethings looking back wistfully on their 20s and their struggles with the vicissitudes of adulthood might get a bang out of this. (Apr.)
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From The New Yorker

This début novel updates Mary McCarthy’s “The Group,” a satirical portrait of nineteen-thirties Vassar graduates, for the late-nineties boom years in Manhattan, where six Oberlin graduates struggle to make it as writers, actors, musicians, and academics. The novel ably captures the zeitgeist, with venture capitalists financing magazines headed by M.I.T. prodigies and young people worrying about the gentrification of their Brooklyn neighborhoods. But where McCarthy’s histrionic rich girls enabled her to skewer contemporary mores, Smith Rakoff’s are almost indistinguishable in their blandness. All “dewy flowers of the upper middle class,” they want to rebel against their “brash bourgeois” upbringings intellectually, but without sacrificing material comforts. An understandable dilemma, yet it fails to generate much narrative tension.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (April 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416590773
• ISBN-13: 978-1416590774
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #260,380 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reality Bites for the class of 1994, April 12, 2009

By	Melanchthon "melanchthon" (USA) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

Six characters in search of themselves move to New York City after graduating from Oberlin in 1994, experiencing love, disappointment, personal growth, and perspectival change. There's a great deal to like here; the four female protagonists in particular are well-developed, interesting characters who have to deal with real problems, and/or have to learn to distinguish reality from deception. The male characters are somewhat less effective and more stereotypical, but are also quite effective. I enjoyed the book and will recommend it to others. My main complaint is the blurbing that the book is supposed to capture the experience of a generation. Well, maybe it does, but not my generation. These characters are three years younger than me and it is as if we live in entirely different worlds. The majority of the country did not attend a well-healed private college and did not have the luxury of leading lives like these. That doesn't mean that the book doesn't speak to very real conflicts in the lives of people who were in their late twenties in the 1990s--just that its appeal is less universal than the publisher seems to think. It's been compared to Mary McCarthy's _The Group_, which I think is fair--but like that book, you will only really love this one if you identify strongly with the social group being described.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing!, May 21, 2009

By	lisa terwilliger (connecticut) - See all my reviews

This book has intense and realistic characters making their way through life's experiences. I loved how the stories about each individual added up to a bigger picture. A throughly engrossing read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New York, New York, April 2, 2009

By	EGranfors (Santa Clarita, CA) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

As Mary McCarthy presented the "new" women of the thirties, Rona Jaffe, the women of the fifties, and Nancy Thayer, the women of the seventies and eighties, Joanna Smith Rakoff explores the lives of women coming of age in the 21st century.

The story centers on Oberlin chums who move to New York, seeking their place in the world on and in romance. Sadie, Beth, Lil, and Emily find that life is not simply the grand adventure of deep thinking and literary finesse college taught them it would be.

There are problems with men, problems with one another, bills to pay, and bosses to please. Parents are disappointed or distant; friendships disintegrate and rebloom.

What I liked best about this book is that Rakoff takes her time telling the story, developing each woman's personal history and inner voice. She takes time with the men, so that they do not come off as caricatures of goodness or neglect.

This is a fine debut novel with a deeply satisfying story about the world of young New Yorkers today. Rakoff is especially on target in the ambivalence of Caitlin and Sadie in the chapters about the "new" child-as-god approach to motherhood, with a fitting finish, a long, uncomfortable ride in a limousine for a nursing mom.