The Nest

By: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Narrated by: Mia Barron

A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives.

Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a 19-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, "The Nest", which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest midlife supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest's value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.

Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can't seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they've envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.

This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney brings a remarkable cast of characters to life to illuminate what money does to relationships, what happens to our ambitions over the course of time, and the fraught yet unbreakable ties we share with those we love.

©2016 Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Johnathan Franzen with Jane Austen ending

And yes, dear reader, I married him.

Okay, that is not the exact ending of this book, but the ending is a modernized version of a tidy happy ending that picks up all the loose ends. The problem with this ending is that the whole book is based on several tropes we've seen over and over again in Franzen:

-multiple and connected snarky, not-very-nice protagonists who make other people miserable
-goody two shoes partners or lovers of the snarky protagonists who live with and suffer from their nonsense for longer than the reader can bear

Now that I've revealed my dislike for the protagonist Plum family, I will say that this book is very well-written. And it certainly holds the reader's interest as the four entitled main characters sabotage themselves repeatedly while hurtling toward the conclusion. The book is witty, and the plot is carefully crafted and in some place, ingenious (hint: what do Rodin, 9-11 and true love have in common?)

A couple of the secondary characters are marvelous - a retired firefighter who lost his wife when the towers fell, a sassy metrosexual teenager.

A couple of conclusions made me squirm - can't a woman be whole unto herself without a lackluster man or a sticky baby?

My final lament: why does everyone in the New York publishing industry think the rest of the world wants to read about the New York publishing industry? The sheer percentage of these books when stacked up against all the other things happening in the world is staggeringly unbalanced.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book not as art that reveals something about the human condition, but as a highly entertaining read about some people you are perfectly happy to leave behind when the book's over.

Bad reading

Loved the book it is helping me to do my will for my children. The readers impersonations and accents were horrible.

Current yet timeless

The author really trusted her story. Too many books feel they need to rely on gimmicks such as murder or adultery. Ms. Sweeney builds a wonderful Nest from one family's joy and pain.

Soap Opera

Reads like a soap opera... drama, romance, tragedy and a love child. It’s all in the life of the Plum family.

Highly recommend it

Heartwarming and realistic. A story you can't stop listening too. I enjoyed every minute of it

Great read, very entertaining, funny, smart, slick

Loved it,couldn't put it down from pure enjoyment. New York stylish, many faceted, what's next???

Not the best book I have ever read.

the book was ok. some parts interesting . I didn't really like the ending. thanks

Started out really well

I thought the narrator did a great job. The story really hooked me in at the beginning but then it left something to be desired towards the back half of the book. Fairly entertaining, easy & light summer read.

Hooked from the get-go

I came across this novel years ago when a prof was reading it. I love complex stories like this that flesh out ALL of the characters to their full extent. You learn the good and bad of all of these characters, and it definitely didn’t end in a way that I expected.

An enjoyable, light (aka lite) read with a moral

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

yes. This is a fun, light-hearted with fable-like undertones of the corruptive power of money and the redemptive power of love and family. I would classify this book with The Assistants as beach-read level expose into the social inner-workings of a Manhattan-ite family of four adult siblings, each coping with conflicting feelings towards each other and their anticipated inheritance which was initially modest in sum and intent but which, thanks to favorable market conditions and sage trading decisions on the part of the lawyer managing the fun, has grown into a wealth-making sum, even after being split four ways. The characters are lite but sufficiently developed. The language is crisp. The narrative is clear and engaging. overall, a very satisfying excursion.

What other book might you compare The Nest to and why?

I would compare this book to The Assistants, China Rich Girfriend, and The Rosie Project. All of these books are light, engaging treatments of fairly serious subjects. Each is written in its own clever style that ellicits laughs out loud in varying degrees.