Here’s a compliment I never expected to pay to The Nest: it coheres.

It comes together in the end, in spite of its messy front two-thirds. That doesn’t mean I’d recommend the book. The bad very much does outweigh the good in my opinion. But at least you’re not left miserable. It is able to summon a basically heart-warming attempt at character growth.

There’s the compliment part of my compliment sandwich done. It’s an open-faced sandwich.

The first two-thirds of this novel are exactly what people are talking about when they say they hate literary fiction or ‘book club books.’ Mediocre wordcraft about unhappy assholes bitchily navel-gazing about their unfulfilling relationships and the wasted potential of their literary careers. Trying to be a novel snarkily deriding the hollow posturing of self-obsessed literary hacks while being a writer’s seminar New York-pilled self-absorbed literary hack yourself is a special kind of sauce. Here’s my unsolicited advice: don’t attempt to spear fictional characters for being mediocre and shallow until you can ensure your own novel is not also mediocre and shallow.

It is immediately apparent that this book ought to be about self-awareness because all of the characters desperately need some. The Nest is like ‘Schitt’s Creek’ if ‘Schitt’s Creek’ thought it was ‘Succession.’ Our characters bemoan their waning access to a level of wealth that appears increasingly  unethical and destructive as the economy crashes around us. Instead it becomes about, I don’t know, accepting the situation as it is? Not holding out false hope? This should be a book about money and about greed, but greed isn’t particularly flattering, so when characters need to grow the novel flushes its own set up down the New York toilet.

I’m being mean because The Nest is steeped in a genuinely detestable bourgeoisie obsession that it is never able to shake, particularly destructive for a book about money. By this I mean an obsession with being and remaining bourgeois, which sucks because, while I do like books about rich people, I really don’t have a lot of sympathy for a bunch of people who are merely quite wealthy rather than ultra-wealthy. The eponymous Nest is a trust fund inheritance that our four principle characters have been relying on to solidify their tenuous grasp on their wealthy lifestyles.

Again, I don’t mind a book about the bizarre follies of the rich (imo that’s what makes dark academia compelling as a genre) so long as I’m not expected to sympathize with them about how how vacuous and annoying other rich people are. In one scene, stay-at-home mom Melody is accosted by two other PTA moms. As they chirp about how totally unfair it is that financial aid isn’t offered to white kids in rich suburbs, Melody reflects on how horribly vapid they all are for not knowing what it’s like to be an only tenuously wealthy housewife. And I wanted to reach right into the page and shake her until she realized she was exactly the same, or at least until her $250 haircut was disastrously mussed. There was nothing uniquely deserving about suffering from being a rich kid who grows up to be a potentially less rich adult.

Every character is nauseatingly attached to material possessions, particularly houses. We get three separate passages about characters who bought at low prices in undervalued neighbourhoods or were gifted a cheap place only to smugly reflect on how great gentrification is if you’ve got a foot on the property ladder. Even the characters that aren’t anxiously grasping at external signifiers of wealth to fill the empty void inside them are characterized by their tastefully authentic scandi modern brownstones. Is this what being middle-aged is like? Only caring about how good your stuff looks in the golden light of a New York sunrise?

Speaking of New York, there is something about being a writer living and writing about New York that cooks your brain. I started a shelf on Goodreads called ‘What is Wrong with New Yorkers’ as a private joke after reading the bizarro worlds of Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman and The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy. I quickly learned that whatever is in the water there (I assume it’s also what makes the bagels taste like that) isn’t limited to non-fiction. I don’t know how to explain the specifics of this, but no one believes there is something uniquely special about New York more strongly than New Yorkers. It’s a type of Paris Syndrome that only affects locals. The most visible part of this is books set in New York’s enduing obsession with the same few New York landmarks. Hilariously, The Nest sets the uncomfortable and contentious family reunion in the same Grand Central seafood restaurant as Cleopatra and Frankenstein sets its uncomfortable and contentious family reunion. I get that it’s apparently an iconic spot, but it does give the impression that New York has a population of ~8 million but only one restaurant. The emphasis on the same half-dozen iconic sports makes entire novels feel like that one establishing shot of the Empire State Building in every tv show opening credits.

This New Yorkism is the sense that the story could only take place in New York not because of any specific element tying the characters and their problems to the place but due to some ineffable magic that the rest of the world tragically lacks. Novels set in other cities, even other large and weird international cities, are not like this. In reality, The Nest could only be set in New York because the target audience of a book in which the only sympathetic character is a formerly promising literature girlie live there. 

The experience of reading this book is the experience of browsing an Erewhon, or perhaps catching a glimpse of the inside of one of those fancy dressage barns, the kind with woodchip floors, or of making awkward eye contact with diners at a restaurant that you’ve just realized is out of your price range as you try to back inconspicuously out the door. It’s obvious who this is for, and it’s not you.

*

As a bonus, here’s a list of New York attractions that appear in every book about New York regardless of whether it makes sense, in order of frequency:
1. Central Park — I think you’re actually contractually obligated to include this one or they blackball you from the publishing industry.
2. New York Library — this ranks particularly high because it appeals to the self-importance of writers. See The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
3. Grand Central Station — self-evident, particularly common in books about the countryside retreats of New Yorkers like The Guest by Emma Cline
4. The MoMA/The Met — Even Donna Tartt is not immune from New Yorkism. These are used basically interchangeably. For whatever reason The Guggenheim is not nearly as popular a name drop. 
5. The Brooklyn Bridge — this appears bizarrely frequently despite being a very awkward setting for most scenes. 
Honourable Mention: I eliminated Fifth Avenue since it contains over half the other landmarks and it felt like cheating to count them twice. 

Love the complex family relationships and how all the characters stories intertwine.

Insufferable, selfish, entitled people who make bad decisions and can't figure out why their lives are in such a shambles. The writing was good, but the book was painful to read.