The altruists
Ridker, Andrew2019
Books
Find it!
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 in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides, with shades of Philip Roth and Zadie Smith. 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."
Main title:
The altruists / Andrew Ridker.
Author:
Ridker, Andrew, author
Imprint:
London : Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage, [2019]©2019
Collation:
308 pages ; 23 cm.
ISBN:
9781787330450 (hardback)
Dewey class:
813.6
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
350721
More Information:
| Location | Collection | Call number | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brighton Library | Adult Fiction - General | RIDK | Available |