STORY SUMMARY
The Firth family is one lower middle class dysfunctional family. There is Renee, who is only briefly mentioned...the oldest....who is married and lives out in Colorado. The rest of the family live in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts.
Mark Firth, married to Karen, is a local housing contractor. They have a young daughter named Haley who goes to a private school. She is in middle school. Mark restores homes. Gerry is Mark's brother and he is in real estate. Their other sister Candace, works at the local public school as an assistant principal.
It's the early days after 9/11 and Mark is in NYC hoping to meet with a lawyer who is helping him due to a financial swindler who claimed to be a financial advisor. This man took most of Mark's life savings.
Philip Hadi, a millionaire from NYC, moves his wife Rachel and their 2 children to Howland, MA for a few years after 9/11. He owns a summer home right across the road from Mark and now Philip and his family plan on staying there year round. He hires Mark to do some security upgrades and other renovations as they plan on living there for awhile.
Inspired by Hadi, Mark begins to look around for a sure investment. He discovers the mid-decade housing boom of the early 2000s. Karen objects, but Mark teams up with his brother Gerry who has been fired from his real estate job, into buying up foreclosures and renovating them to flip them.
Then the town's first selectman dies and Hadi decides to volunteer for the job. He soon begins to change Howland into his image...into things he wants to see transformed, including lowering taxes. There are some unexpected results for Mark and for his extended family.
MY THOUGHTS
This book was rich in character development. It started out with an odd character whom we only see at the beginning of this story. A character who actually meets Mark in the lawyer's office in NYC and ends up stealing Mark's credit card, making Mark a victim again. The beginning is odd......but it does set up the Mark character's backstory.
The setting is very well done...I know many of the villages/towns mentioned in this book and although I think Howland is a fictitious town, the other towns mentioned are all real and I've been to every single one! That made it really interesting to me.
This story is mainly about rural people vs urban folks; the poor vs the rich; the local townies vs the weekenders/summer folk.
It centers around the drama of many small town characters and the decline of the working class. It centers around the angst of rising inequality.
It really shows the fear and insecurities of people in the days immediately folllowing 9/11 and just how far we will go to feel safe and secure.
This book made me impatient with some of the characters.....it seemed so frustrating to me to have them deal with the problems that they just couldn't seem to solve: unemployment, crappy housing, low paying jobs, alcoholism, family unrest, Alzheimer's disease, financial hardship. Almost every single character frustrated me except for Mark's daughter Haley.
And then she does something at the end of the book which just makes the ending seem disconnected from the rest of the story but which is also a profound statement in ways. I think it's supposed to be some kind of political allegory although that part kind of got bogged down for me. It was downright depressing at times...kind of like the year 2016 ( although it's set earlier that that of course.
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to some mature content).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this an 8.
1 comment:
Sounds like an interesting book. Thanks for another good review!
Post a Comment