Lapham Rising
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Harry March is something of a wreck and more than half nuts. Up until now, he has lived peacefully on an island in the Hamptons with his talking dog, Hector, a born-again Evangelical and unapologetic capitalist. But March’s life starts to completely unravel when Lapham—an ostentatious multimillionaire who made his fortune on asparagus tongs—begins construction of a gargantuan mansion just across the way. To Harry, Lapham’s monstrosity-to-be represents the fetid and corrupt excess that has ruined modern civilization. Which means, quite simply, that this is war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The yahoos take the Hamptons in the barbed first novel from the Time and PBS Newshour cultural critic Rosenblatt (The Rules of Aging), a wicked sendup of class relations on Long Island's East End. Harry March a disgruntled novelist, misanthrope and recluse on a Quogue sandbar he calls Noman ("Noman is an island") has only his little cottage and his West Highland terrier Hector to call his own: his wife has left; his three children are grown. Three generations of Harry's family are rooted in town as noble-thinking doctors and teachers, so perhaps he has his history, too, but that history, and Harry's whole quietly seething existence, are under attack by the noisy erection of the arriviste's bells-and-whistles mansion across the water. Lapham (as in Silas, not Lewis) has new money that originates in asparagus tongs. His Quogue invasion, undertaken along with sexy Southern real estate agent Kathy Polite (rhymes with "elite"), sparks Harry's very active critical mind to action, and he quickly plans fiery vengeance. Rosenblatt thumps his familiar socialist themes and is quotably tongue-in-cheek: there's a restaurant in town called Writer's Crock; in his catalogue of Lapham's objets is a chandelier left over from Kristallnacht. This satisfyingly old-school stab at the Hamptons' debasement will have New Yorker readers laughing out loud, even as it sends them up, too.
