01/07/2019
The “white elephant” of Langsdorf’s lively and entertaining debut refers to the architectural abomination of a house that’s been constructed in Willard Park, a D.C. suburb known for its trees and friendliness. The Millers, who live next door to the White Elephant, find their lives disrupted by the construction of both the house and the swaggering builder behind it, Nick Cox. Allison Miller has to juggle stagnation, in both her creative and sex lives, with a dangerously escalating attraction to Nick, whose very existence antagonizes her husband—especially after Nick accidentally fells a tree that Ted and Allison had planted for their daughter, Jillian. Meanwhile, quiet and socially unassuming preteen Jillian is embarking on an illicit friendship with Nick’s precocious daughter, Lindy. Besides the Millers and the Coxes, there’s also Suzanne and Grant Davenport-Gardner, new to the neighborhood after Grant was fired from his last job at a law firm for smoking weed. As the lives of these Willard Park residents overlap and intersect over a six-month period, affairs are conducted, houses are built and knocked down, and a community is irreversibly changed. As with many ensemble novels, some characters do not get the development they deserve, most notably Nick’s wife, Kaye, a flighty-seeming Southern belle. Nevertheless, this ambitious and intriguing work about the American suburbs is perfect for fans of Ann Patchett or Meg Wolitzer. (Mar.)
White Elephant is a terrific debut, brimming with wit, well-honed prose and sharp observations into human nature. It’s the kind of book I want to press into the hands of friends, because I know how much they will enjoy it.
An interloper’s plans to build a McMansion amid the cozy bungalows leads to angry town halls, scandalous romantic dalliances and shady high jinks.... All smart, satiric fun, the kind of comic novel that helps us see our own foibles while we’re laughing at those of others.
Julie Langsdorf mines wit from the ways that people manage (or don’t) to live in close proximity. Her smart, enjoyable suburban comedy is observant and knowing about social selves and hidden selves, and the ways in which they are sometimes made to overlap.
When a huge, garish home called the White Elephant infiltrates Willard Park, a quiet suburb, the neighborhood falls into utter comedic chaos. In the shadow of the home, neighbors begin to fight, lives are upended, and their once-peaceful town becomes anything but.
Writing with wonderful wit and precision, Langsdorf arranges her characters as thoughtfully as the tree-lined streets in their idyllic planned community.... White Elephant belongs on the bookshelf next to Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm and Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road .
If you’ve spent any time on the social media website Nextdoor, you know that neighborhoods are teeming with quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) resentments and bitter turf wars. The debut comic novel from Washington, D.C., author Langsdorf focuses on residents of a suburb locked in an angry fight.
White skewering its vacuity and vulgarity, Langsdorf captures the sensuous allure of confident, over-the-top American consumerism... Like Tom Perrotta’s “Little Children” and Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” “White Elephant” exposes middle-class domestic malaise with a light comedic touch.
New York Times Book Review
A smart, riveting look at what happens to a community when competing visions of the American Dream collide and combust. Langsdorf is a keen observer of human frailty and desire and her characters are darkly funny, recognizably exasperating and deeply memorable.
Langsdorf gleefully skewers small-town stereotypes.... But beneath the caricatures are deeper truths about belonging, community, and relationships. In this smartly satirical novel, the raging feud reveals much about the residents’ core values.
Delightful.... Langsdorf lets us peek into the windows of these cookie cutter houses and eavesdrop on the residents of Willard Park as they gossip, seek revenge and struggle with what it means to be a good neighbor. This debut is an absolute pleasure to read.
The ‘white elephant’ in this darkly comic social satire is a gaudy new home constructed in a quaint Washington, D.C., suburb. Conflict over the home pits residents against each other and turns their town into a battleground.
Julie Langsdorf’s debut novel slams two conflicting ideas of the American Dream smack into each other with both wit and wisdom.... The dialogue is sharp and a mystery subplot adds a dash of suspense. Entertainment at its best, White Elephant earns a shiny, gold star.
A smart, riveting look at what happens to a community when competing visions of the American Dream collide and combust. Langsdorf is a keen observer of human frailty and desire and her characters are darkly funny, recognizably exasperating and deeply memorable.
03/01/2019
DEBUT Willard Park is a charming suburb of Washington, DC, with a small-town flavor and a simmering stew of growing resentments. Tree-lined streets and 100-year-old Sears catalog homes are under attack by Nick Cox, a transplanted Southern builder and developer with a thirst for tasteless, ostentatious McMansions. Ted and Allison Miller are sandwiched between the oversized abode of Cox and his hapless wife, Kaye, on one side, and the White Elephant, so dubbed by the locals, a monstrosity Nick is building-to-sell on the other side. Ted is obsessed with the trees being lost in all the construction and the mysterious destruction of other beloved trees throughout the town. Allison, a photographer working on a book of her town, despairs of Ted's dormant libido. Add to the growing tensions that spill over into the community is the disturbing friendship between the two couples' teen daughters. Debut novelist Langsdorf's sure hand lays bare the secrets and hypocrisies of 21st-century American communities hell-bent on preserving what may never have been as they stumble awkwardly toward the light of what could be with just a touch of perspective. VERDICT Funny, spot-on satire relevant in today's divisive noise-machine of battling egos.—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
