Who Are We Without Our Trauma?: A Guest Post by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
The strangest circumstances can often lead to great inspiration — like synchronized swimming did for Taffy Brodesserr-Akner’s writing process. The author of Fleishman is in Trouble has written us an exclusive essay on how her latest novel, Long Island Compromise, came to be. Read on to discover what questions led her to writing this sharp and smart family tale.
Hardcover $30.00
Long Island Compromise: A Novel
Long Island Compromise: A Novel
In Stock Online
Hardcover $30.00
We couldn’t put this one down, and we have a feeling you won’t be able to, either. A story about the benefits and consequences of wealth and the lengths we’ll go to run from our personal mythologies — this cast of characters will hold you for ransom until the very end.
We couldn’t put this one down, and we have a feeling you won’t be able to, either. A story about the benefits and consequences of wealth and the lengths we’ll go to run from our personal mythologies — this cast of characters will hold you for ransom until the very end.
I began writing Long Island Compromise in 2014, when I was on a trip to Russia to report a magazine story about the U.S.’s only male synchronized swimmer. I had come to the point in my career where I realized that there was no amount of success as a journalist that would lead to true solvency, that the middle class really was at its end, that there was no future where my hard work led to security. The rage of this presented itself to me whole. I wrote the first 70 pages of this book right there, in a matter of days, between synchronized swimming events in an aquatic arena.
It wasn’t to be my first book, though. For reasons better left for another time, I ended up writing Fleishman Is in Trouble. But on the day I handed in the last pass of that book, I returned to the story of the Fletchers, a wealthy family from Long Island who find that their fortune has suddenly dwindled to nearly nothing, and they’re left to wonder who they would be if they didn’t have their money. I wanted to explore whether inherited wealth dooms you in a way — if it’s better to come from money and have the perception of safety or if a person is better off having to learn how to fight for their own survival. It’s a good question, and one I tried to answer in this book.
However, it wasn’t the whole story. Questions of another kind of inheritance — inherited trauma — kept tapping on my shoulder, and the book came alive when I finally turned to those questions and let them take control of the story. Who are we without our money is a good question, but who are we without our trauma? That was the question for me.
