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Product Description
Review
"The Privileges is verbally brilliant, intellectually astute, and intricately knowing. It is also very funny and a great, great pleasure to read. Jonathan Dee is a wonderful writer."—Richard Ford
"Here is an incredibly readable, intelligent, incisive portrait of a particular kind of American family. Jonathan Dee takes us inside the world of what desire for wealth can do, and cannot do, for the self, the soul, and the family. The Privileges is told with admirable conciseness and yet with great breadth, and the reader is swept along, watching the complications of such desire unfold."—Elizabeth Strout
"The Privileges is an intimate portrait of a wealthy family that gradually becomes an indictment of an entire social class and historical moment, while also providing a window onto some recent, and peculiarly American, forms of decadence. Jonathan Dee is at once an acerbic social critic, an elegant stylist, and a shrewd observer of the human comedy."—Tom Perrotta
"The subjects of money and class are seldom tackled head-on by our best literary minds, which is one of the reasons that Jonathan Dee's The Privileges is such an important and compelling work. The Privileges is a pitch-perfect evocation of a particular stratum of New York society as well as a moving meditation on family and romantic love. The tour de force first chapter alone is worth the price of admission." —Jay McInerney
"Mr. Dee has given us a cunning, seductive novel about the people we thought we'd all agreed to hate. His case study of American mega-wealth is delicious page by page and masterly in its balancing of sympathy and critical distance." —Jonathan Franzen
"Ensnaring tale of alienating wealth, in which Dee breaks fresh artistic ground with the sheer beauty and quiet poignancy of his prose. A suspenseful, melancholy, and acidly funny tale about self, family, entitlement, and life’s mysteries and inevitabilities."—Booklist
"Dee notably spurns flat portraits of greed, instead letting the characters' self-awareness and self-forgetfulness stand on their own to create an appealing portrait of a world won by risk."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Thoughtful and bracingly unpredictable"—Kirkus
"Dee’s luminous prose never falters; he’s a master"—Entertainment Weekly
"Scintillating. . .Dee is a remarkably skilled portraitist with a rare talent for rendering his characters’ points of view with deep empathy."—Washington Post
"A transfixing account of the rise and rise of a ‘charmed couple.’ . . . Composed in Dee's typically elegant style -- gorgeous, winding sentences."—Los Angeles Times
"Dee moves from scene to scene like a cinematographer, capturing the essence of a character in a telling glimpse."—Financial Times
"Dee is a writer of skill and emotional depth. His latest, The Privileges, should catapult him to darling status—deservedly. . . . an electric, funny, tragic, loving tale."—Time Out NY
"Graceful, articulate and perceptive, and often hilariously funny...Dee's lively shimmering prose illuminates wonderfully observed dystopian moments...[his] writing is so full of elegance, vitality and complexity...at once funny, subversive and sympathetic."—New York Times Book Review
"Dee has a great eye for detail, physical and emotional, and invites us to watch with eyes wide open as the Morey family sails past disaster into a future most people—until they read about such matters in novels as good as this -- would think they would like to inhabit."—NPR
"A deliciously sophisticated engine of literary darkness."—The Guardian
"The novel goes down like a perfectly chilled glass of champagne—crisp, sparkling and delicious."—Bookforum
"Lucidly written and with a pitch-perfect ear for contemporary mores and dialogue, The Privileges is entertaining—and morally ambiguous."—Economist
"[The Privileges] blends social commentary with psychological exploration…Dee has a gifted essayist’s way with a phrase."—Seattle Times
"Dee is a seamless writer…[he] never mocks his characters or subverts their charms…[which] separates The Privileges from other novels that mine the same shimmering urban terrain."—Philadelphia Inquirer
"[Dee] adeptly penetrates the mindset of these relentlessly narcissistic characters...[His] discerning portrayal of their inner lives keeps the pages turning.—BookPage
"Captivating [and] shrewdly realistic." —Salon.com
"Striking the right note for our times, Dee precisely captures the unethical world of a Manhattan hedge-fund manager, his disaffected daughter, and the glittering dangers of success."—Daily Beast
"Dee notably spurns flat portraits of greed, instead letting the characters' self-awareness and self-forgetfulness stand on their own to create an appealing portrait of a world won by risk."—Publishers Weekly, starred
From the Hardcover edition.
"Here is an incredibly readable, intelligent, incisive portrait of a particular kind of American family. Jonathan Dee takes us inside the world of what desire for wealth can do, and cannot do, for the self, the soul, and the family. The Privileges is told with admirable conciseness and yet with great breadth, and the reader is swept along, watching the complications of such desire unfold."—Elizabeth Strout
"The Privileges is an intimate portrait of a wealthy family that gradually becomes an indictment of an entire social class and historical moment, while also providing a window onto some recent, and peculiarly American, forms of decadence. Jonathan Dee is at once an acerbic social critic, an elegant stylist, and a shrewd observer of the human comedy."—Tom Perrotta
"The subjects of money and class are seldom tackled head-on by our best literary minds, which is one of the reasons that Jonathan Dee's The Privileges is such an important and compelling work. The Privileges is a pitch-perfect evocation of a particular stratum of New York society as well as a moving meditation on family and romantic love. The tour de force first chapter alone is worth the price of admission." —Jay McInerney
"Mr. Dee has given us a cunning, seductive novel about the people we thought we'd all agreed to hate. His case study of American mega-wealth is delicious page by page and masterly in its balancing of sympathy and critical distance." —Jonathan Franzen
"Ensnaring tale of alienating wealth, in which Dee breaks fresh artistic ground with the sheer beauty and quiet poignancy of his prose. A suspenseful, melancholy, and acidly funny tale about self, family, entitlement, and life’s mysteries and inevitabilities."—Booklist
"Dee notably spurns flat portraits of greed, instead letting the characters' self-awareness and self-forgetfulness stand on their own to create an appealing portrait of a world won by risk."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Thoughtful and bracingly unpredictable"—Kirkus
"Dee’s luminous prose never falters; he’s a master"—Entertainment Weekly
"Scintillating. . .Dee is a remarkably skilled portraitist with a rare talent for rendering his characters’ points of view with deep empathy."—Washington Post
"A transfixing account of the rise and rise of a ‘charmed couple.’ . . . Composed in Dee's typically elegant style -- gorgeous, winding sentences."—Los Angeles Times
"Dee moves from scene to scene like a cinematographer, capturing the essence of a character in a telling glimpse."—Financial Times
"Dee is a writer of skill and emotional depth. His latest, The Privileges, should catapult him to darling status—deservedly. . . . an electric, funny, tragic, loving tale."—Time Out NY
"Graceful, articulate and perceptive, and often hilariously funny...Dee's lively shimmering prose illuminates wonderfully observed dystopian moments...[his] writing is so full of elegance, vitality and complexity...at once funny, subversive and sympathetic."—New York Times Book Review
"Dee has a great eye for detail, physical and emotional, and invites us to watch with eyes wide open as the Morey family sails past disaster into a future most people—until they read about such matters in novels as good as this -- would think they would like to inhabit."—NPR
"A deliciously sophisticated engine of literary darkness."—The Guardian
"The novel goes down like a perfectly chilled glass of champagne—crisp, sparkling and delicious."—Bookforum
"Lucidly written and with a pitch-perfect ear for contemporary mores and dialogue, The Privileges is entertaining—and morally ambiguous."—Economist
"[The Privileges] blends social commentary with psychological exploration…Dee has a gifted essayist’s way with a phrase."—Seattle Times
"Dee is a seamless writer…[he] never mocks his characters or subverts their charms…[which] separates The Privileges from other novels that mine the same shimmering urban terrain."—Philadelphia Inquirer
"[Dee] adeptly penetrates the mindset of these relentlessly narcissistic characters...[His] discerning portrayal of their inner lives keeps the pages turning.—BookPage
"Captivating [and] shrewdly realistic." —Salon.com
"Striking the right note for our times, Dee precisely captures the unethical world of a Manhattan hedge-fund manager, his disaffected daughter, and the glittering dangers of success."—Daily Beast
"Dee notably spurns flat portraits of greed, instead letting the characters' self-awareness and self-forgetfulness stand on their own to create an appealing portrait of a world won by risk."—Publishers Weekly, starred
From the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
Smart and socially gifted, Adam and Cynthia Morey are perfect for each other. With Adam’s rising career in the world of private equity, a beautiful home in Manhattan, gorgeous children, and plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful. But for the Moreys, their future of boundless privilege is not arriving fast enough. As Cynthia begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a choice that will test how much he is willing to risk to ensure his family’s happiness and to recapture the sense that the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility. The Privileges is an odyssey of a couple touched by fortune, changed by time, and guided above all else by their epic love for each other.
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting family...interesting novel,
By
This review is from: The Privileges: A Novel (Hardcover)
I'm giving "The Privileges" five stars because I was caught up in the dynamics within the Morey family - Adam and Cynthia and their two children, April and Jonas - and their relationships with the people and situations outside the family unit. Cynthia and Adam, both from solidly middle-class families, met in college and married upon graduation. They were, from the start, a single unit of two, which quickly expanded with the births of their two children to a unit of four. Both were estranged from their birth families, though Cynthia is reunited with her father on his death-bed. She had a "removed" relationship with her mother. Adam's parents died relatively early in the marriage and he was on "removed" terms with a younger brother, Conrad. Adam did phenomenally well in business in New York and Adam and Cynthia were quickly vaulted to the top-echelon on Wall Street earners - and spenders.What I found interesting about Jonathan Dee's portrayal of the Moreys and their children was he didn't take the easy way out and make Adam a typical Wall Street-shark, with no morals (though he did do some shady speculating) who cheated on his wife, finally replacing her with a series of "trophy-wives". He could have made Cynthia a typical NY society "social X-ray", whose only interest was in spending Adam's money as fast as she could on houses and clothes and art. Dee gives a nuanced look at Adam and Cynthia. They were NYC achievers who were, at the same time, devoted to each other and to their two children. Even though they spent large amounts of money on themselves, they also established a foundation to help the many disadvantaged in both America and abroad. The two children, particularly April, were more broadly drawn and seemed to disappear often into "heir-dom" with the attendant problems of drugs, promiscuity, and aimless living. I liked the book and while I didn't "like" all the characters - particularly Cynthia, at times - I was interested in what happened to them. I think you can't ask more than that with a novel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (93 customer reviews) 52 of 59 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sociopathy, Narcissism and Wallstreet,
By kamc - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Privileges: A Novel (Hardcover)
Post-Madoff, post-TARP bailout, post-those scandalous bonuses, you, like many others, may have come to the conclusion that stratospheric success on WallStreet isn't exactly the product of genius, acumen, work ethic or determination as much as the product of narcissism and sociopathy. And according to this novel, you'd be right.So when a handsome, charming sociopath meets a beautiful, proud narcissist in college, first comes love, then comes marriage... Wallstreet is destiny. Adam has no regrets, he could not care less about yesterday and he has nothing resembling emotional bonds outside of his own nuclear family and nothing but his wife really matters as she satisfies any need for the justification of his ruthless ambition. Cynthia on the other hand, cares little for those beyond her own nuclear family unless they gratify her self-image in some way. Both are not just unsentimental. They are asentimental. She briefly has small a crisis of self-faith about her performance as a top notch mom over a minor incident which sets off a rousing round of justification for Adam's insider trading. Insider trading and illegal offshoring of ill-gotten funds is therefore noble because it's for the family cause, but infidelity would be an unspeakable transgression in this relationship. I'm not sure what purpose the kids serve to further this vignette unless it's because everyone has them, maybe even especially narcissists and sociopaths. And the kids do serve up a couple of different perspectives on what a casual rather causal relationship with such wealth breeds and Dee invests a lot of time in them plot-wise. April, the extrovert, compensates for her sense of cultural rootlessness resulting from her parents' disregard for extra-family attachment and asentimentality ultimately by cultivating both the careless arrogance of her mother and the same wreckless lack of empathy for those outside the family as her father. Jonah, the introvert, compensates for a childhood and adolescence void of personal struggle and subsequent meaningful achievement by setting himself on a quest for a unicorn called authenticity. Best passage from the book for me was, "The whole idea of forgiveness presumed you were locked in the past and trying to let yourself out. She wasn't going to drag him back in that direction, to make him explain why he had lived as he had lived. That wasn't who they were. Each moment bore only the next one and if you were going to be successful in this life, that was the plane on which you had to live. If you started going on your knees to the past, demanding something from it, you were dead. She asked nothing from it." The rich aren't like you and I. Because, above all else, they have never believed they are like everyone else even on the most fundamental human level, even before they became wealthy. And that's what Dee's The Privileges is at its core. 17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
When a $250,000 Bonus isn't Enough.........,
By Mr. August "Literature lover" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Privileges: A Novel (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
This is an interesting novel, reminding me of F. Scott Fitzgerald who portrayed the affluent and John Updike who revealed inner lives of Americans who respond to personal turmoil and obligations. But Jonathan Dee moves beyond typical with Adam and Cynthia who prove throughout the book they are a superbly well-matched couple. They view themselves as invincible and only need each other.They marry young, the story opens with their wedding, and they both exude rare confidence. Cynthia has meager feelings for anyone except Adam and her elusive father. Adam appears to have stepped out of his blue collar family and has found Cynthia, a true partner to help him triumph. What they both lack in conscience is made up in their aspirations for wealth and power. Adam is the star at a small investment firm where he does well every year earning large salaries and larger bonuses. But it is not enough for him. He steps out of the legitimate realm, hooks up with a small time crook and sets up a separate operation which boosts his income making him a rich man, who does not get caught. His timing is perfect; he shuts down this venture and later starts a hedge fund where investors beg him for inclusion, reminiscent of Bernie Madoff. They have two children, the daughter is the stereotypical spoiled brat who can do anything and her parents will bail her out no matter what. The son has more depth and some despair. Dee's characterizations of this family are rich with significant milestones in their lives. This could have been a trite story of how the rich live and it's never enough, but Dee's writing is excellent and I know people like Adam and Cynthia. They are real to me. Nothing dreadful happens to them, they in truth don't care about anyone. Adam believes one should leave a mark in this world or it's as if you never were here. I believed Adam's obsession with his success, Cynthia's obsession with his success and their strong belief they did no wrong. Everyone dances to their wishes and they live happily ever after in their privileged world. 33 of 41 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
An Embrace of Excess,
By Jill I. Shtulman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Privileges: A Novel (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
Adam and Cynthia Morey are rich. Not just rich, but obscenely rich. We meet them at their lavish wedding, two starry-eyed children pretending to be adults, right at the cusp of all things good. And we follow them as they quickly become parents to April and Jonah and begin to accumulate more and more and more...stepping over the dark side to insider trading and unmarked overseas bank accounts.There has been much written today about the spoiled, irresponsible, and unethical affluent -- their values, their lifestyle, their implosions. Characters don't necessarily have to be "likable" to be interesting; for example, Tom Wolfe in Bonfires of the Vanities, Caitlin Macy in Spoiled, and Claire Messud in The Emperor's Children create solid narratives based on the most wealthy Americans. For the first half of this book, it appeared to me that Jonathan Dee would rise to this strata. Indeed, at the beginning, Mr. Dee carefully crafts a narrative of Adam and Cynthia, and leads the reader to the point of their temptation -- where they view Adam's mentor's extravagant "country" house. But then, inconceivably, the threads begin unraveling and the story begins falling apart. The focus of the book shifts to the children -- April and Jonah -- who are nowhere as interesting as their parents (who also begin to drift into the landscape of cliches). Dare I say they are actually boring? They are the children of privilege and their lives become insular and one-dimensional -- April's flirtation with physical and substance abuse danger, Jonah's yearning for something "real". They drift from one experience to the other, always narcissists without the in-depth back story to make them appealing to the reader. At one point, Mr. Dee writes, "It wasn't about being rich per se. It was about living a big life, a life that was larger than life. Money was just the instrument." Had he pursued that theme, this would have been a far more fascinating read. As it is, the narrative becomes smaller than life with little new to impart. |
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