The Nest

The Nest

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:
Write a review

2 ratings • 1 reviews

A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives. Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs’ joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems. Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the future they’ve envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives. This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Sweeney brings a remarkable cast of characters to life to illuminate what money does to relationships, what happens to our ambitions over the course of time, and the fraught yet unbreakable ties we share with those we love.


From the Forum

No posts yet

Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update

Recent Reviews
  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    Read this book for the fiction book group, and overall it was a pretty middle-of-the-road read for me. I got the impression that most of the others in my group thought so as well, though there was at least one woman who said she really loved it, and felt it strongly mirrored her own experiences with her sisters and what happened after their mother passed away and they were left to manage her estate and divide her belongings.
    That being said, even though most people there rated it a 3/5, there was plenty of spirited discussion, that for the most part was about money and how it can influence people (and how it shaped the characters).

    For me, the writing style wasn't really anything special, and though I was enjoying what I was reading there was not the tension to make me want to keep turning pages. I think there was a realistic portrayal of tension and stress that made the characters realistic and sympathetic, but this did not translate into page-turning intensity.
    I really didn't like the book enough nor dislike the book enough to have feelings about it that I want to write down even a couple days later.

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • Community recs for similar books
    Buy Lucy & Jennifer a coffee ☕️