Play Book Tag discussion

The Nest – Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Digital audio performed by Mia Barron.
3.5***

Four middle-aged siblings have to confront expectations, disappointments, half-truths, obfuscations and downright lies. The impetus for their meeting is that oldest brother Leo has used “the Nest” – a trust fund left by their long-deceased father for them to share equally – for rehab and to pay damages to a teen-aged waitress he injured in an accident while high on cocaine. But the other three have counted on that money, want that money, NEED that money – to save a failing business or pay off a mortgage on a too-large house or cover tuition at a private college.

This is a wonderful debut novel, a character-driven tale that explores sibling relations, family dynamics, and a host of other issues that require open communication … something the Plumb siblings have never learned to do. I got drawn into their dynamic fairly quickly, but I think Sweeney was a bit too ambitious. There are so many issues she touches on – from homosexuality to undocumented immigrants to pressure put on children by their parents to get into a top university to grief and mourning – and Sweeney uses different characters in addition to the four Plumb siblings to explore these issues. The result is that I felt lost at times.

This was further complicated by the fact that I was listening to the audio. Don’t misunderstand … Mia Barron does a fine job. She has a great pace, clear diction and enough skill as a voice artist to make each character unique. But when point of view suddenly shifts it’s difficult to reconcile what’s happening without the text in front of you.

I’ll be interested to see what Sweeney does in her next novel.


LINK to my review

This was a pretty compelling read, but I found that I liked the secondary characters way more than the siblings. Perhaps that was intentional, but given all the raves reviews it got when first published, I thought it was just OK.

I enjoyed this - a summer pool read for sure.