Purchase
Harper
August 2011
On Sale: August 2, 2011
240 pages ISBN: 0062024388 EAN: 9780062024381 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction Family Life
When the Bergamots move from a comfortable upstate college
town to New York City, they’re not quite sure how they’ll
adapt—or what to make of the strange new world of well-to-do
Manhattan. Soon, though, Richard is consumed by his
executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who
has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of
their children, is hectically ferrying young Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a
group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school. But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped
themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning
after an unchaperoned party and finds an email in his in-box
from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually
explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe
a little proud, and scared—a jumble of adolescent emotion—he
forwards the video to a friend, who then for-wards it to a
friend. Within hours, it’s gone viral, all over the school,
the city, the world. The ensuing scandal threatens to shatter the Bergamots’
sense of security and identity, and, ultimately, their
happiness. They are a good family faced with bad choices,
and how they choose to react, individually and at one
another’s behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy. This Beautiful Life is a devastating exploration of the
blurring boundaries of privacy and the fragility of self, a
clear-eyed portrait of modern life that will have readers
debating their assumptions about family, morality, and the
sacrifices and choices we make in the name of love.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|