The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

The Nest is an insight into one family’s dysfunction, after the oldest brother, a selfish and charismatic married man, gets into a car accident with a nineteen year old undocumented girl as his passenger, with her hands where they are not supposed to be. The accident results in him going to rehab and “losing everything” in a divorce, and her losing a limb. But more than that, the accident results in the Plumb siblings, months away from finally receiving their joint trust fund slated for when the youngest of them turns 40, in shambles. Each had counted on the money, a substantial sum, to solve a variety of issues. Now each must struggle with how to move forward in life without their trust fund which has been drastically reduced to take care of the mess of the oldest brother as they wonder whether he will repay them.

As someone who does not have the ultimate financial salvation waiting for me in the form of  a trust fund nor an inheritance, I couldn’t quite muster the empathy necessary to identify with the main characters who now have to face decisions such as how to keep that second (holiday) home. But if you care about the lives of whiny, self-absorbed New York WASPs and are into clichés such as the totally cool Black school-girl, the Latina who calls everyone Mami/Papi, the gay man who has lots of sex despite the threat of AIDS, then this one is for you.

I hear The Nest has been slated for a movie. I suppose one of those Lifetime-like movies that I care not about. Clearly, I will not be watching. I will say though, that the book reads easy. So before you know it, you’ve reached the anti-climatic end and you can go about your life not having to care one iota about any of the characters in this book. But let me not be a curmudgeon. The Nest was named a best book of 2016 by the Washington Post, NPR, Amazon, and People magazine. It was a New York Times Bestseller and a Goodreads choice fiction finalist. It has even been translated into 25 languages and sold across the world. So I guess somebody thinks it’s fantastic, just not I.