The Altruists
A Novel
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3.4 • 40 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice
"[An] intelligent, funny, and remarkably assured first novel. . . . [Andrew Ridker establishes] himself as a big, promising talent. . . . Hilarious. . . . Astute and highly entertaining. . . . Outstanding."
--The New York Times Book Review
"With humor and warmth, Ridker explores the meaning of family and its inevitable baggage. . . . A relatable, unforgettable view of regular people making mistakes and somehow finding their way back to each other."
--People (Book of the Week)
"[A] strikingly assured debut. . . . A novel that grows more complex and more uproarious by the page, culminating in an unforgettable climax."
--Entertainment Weekly (The Must List)
A Real Simple Best Book of the Year (So Far)
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by The Millions and PureWow
A vibrant and perceptive novel about a father's plot to win back his children's inheritance
Arthur Alter is in trouble. A middling professor at a Midwestern college, he can't afford his mortgage, he's exasperated his much-younger girlfriend, and his kids won't speak to him. And then there's the money--the small fortune his late wife, Francine, kept secret, which she bequeathed directly to his children.
Those children are Ethan, an anxious recluse living off his mother's money on a choice plot of Brooklyn real estate, and Maggie, a would-be do-gooder trying to fashion herself a noble life of self-imposed poverty. On the verge of losing the family home, Arthur invites his children back to St. Louis under the guise of a reconciliation. But in doing so, he unwittingly unleashes a Pandora's box of age-old resentments and long-buried memories--memories that orbit Francine, the matriarch whose life may hold the key to keeping them together.
Spanning New York, Paris, Boston, St. Louis, and a small desert outpost in Zimbabwe, The Altruists is a darkly funny (and ultimately tender) family saga that confronts the divide between baby boomers and their millennial offspring. It's a novel about money, privilege, politics, campus culture, dating, talk therapy, rural sanitation, infidelity, kink, the American beer industry, and what it means to be a "good person."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ridker's smashing debut follows the travails of the middle-class Jewish Alter family in their quest to discover how to be moral. Arthur relocated the family from Boston to St. Louis with the goal (never realized) of becoming a tenured professor at Danforth, and it's his wife, Francine's, success as a therapist that has allowed them to live in a wealthy enclave. Their son Ethan is now a 31-year-old gay man who still thinks about his college boyfriend while living as a shut-in in his New York apartment, piling up debt. Ethan's sister Maggie, a recent college graduate, also lives in New York, and seeks to bring goodness everywhere and repeatedly accepts low-paying jobs. Arthur has always been a remote figure to Ethan and Maggie, which only intensifies as they discover the affair he had while Francine was being treated for breast cancer. Two years after Francine's death, Arthur invites his children home for a visit, supposedly to make amends, but it's really because he's broke and Francine's money went to them. While Arthur awkwardly tries to relate to Ethan and Maggie, they begin to see him more as a whole person instead of a construct. Ridker tells his tale with humor, insight, and depth, making this a novel that will resonate with readers.
Customer Reviews
A treasure
Ignore the rating of this on here and Goodreads, this is an excellent character driven book: a flawed family with big ideas and dreams that never quite turn out as planned. Incredibly written, this is a humane portrayal of what it means to be human. Bravo!
Misrepresented
A total downer misrepresented as dark comedy. Not one self-loving character, just a bunch of people mistreating each other with an hasty, unbelievable feint at a redemptive conclusion.