The Latecomer: A Novel

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Overview

*A New York Times Notable Book of 2022*
*A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction*
*An NPR Best Book of the Year*
*A New Yorker Best Book of 2022*

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Latecomer is a layered and immersive literary novel about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.

The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings – Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally – feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child. What role will the “latecomer” play in this fractured family?

A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250790798
Publisher:	Celadon Books
Publication date:	05/31/2022
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	85,253
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Jean Hanff Korelitz is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Plot, You Should Have Known (which aired on HBO in October 2020 as The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland), Admission (adapted as a film in 2013 starring Tina Fey), The Devil and Webster, The White Rose, The Sabbathday River and A Jury of Her Peers, as well as Interference Powder, a novel for children. Her company BOOKTHEWRITER hosts Pop-Up Book Groups in which small groups of readers discuss new books with their authors. She lives in New York City with her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/21/2022

Korelitz (The Plot) returns with an irresistible dramedy of errors about a singularly unhappy family. There’s no love lost among Salo and Johanna Oppenheimer’s triplets as they head off to college in 2000. Harrison, “the smart one”; Lewyn, “the weird one”; and Sally, “the girl,” each have their own separate ambitions. Then there’s Phoebe, “the latecomer,” born that June from the Oppenheimers’ leftover frozen embryo. The strife in the couple’s difficult marriage originates in the 1970s, when they were students at Cornell. Salo was driving a Jeep that rolled over, killing his girlfriend, Mandy Bernstein, and a fraternity brother. Salo and Johanna, a friend of Mandy’s, bond in common grief, but quickly realize they have little else to connect them, and, indeed, as time goes on, Salo loves art more than he does his wife or their children. He becomes a collector of outsider art, stashing his spoils in a warehouse while his family enjoys a privileged life on the Brooklyn Heights waterfront. While Sally and Lewyn sort out their lives at Cornell, and Harrison at an ultraconservative two-year college, Salo makes regular trips to the West Coast to visit a documentary filmmaker he admires, whose life was also shaped by the fateful accident. A birthday clambake on Martha’s Vineyard in early September 2001 sets the stage for a cataclysmic culmination that uncovers a series of festering, self-destructive lies. Korelitz builds several satisfying twists into the crisp and panoramic narrative, and a coda from high schooler Phoebe in 2017 offers an acute look at the family affairs. This is a sizzler. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Jean Hanff Korelitz is an ambidextrous writer: not only can she write a tight and absorbing literary thriller like The Plot, but with The Latecomer she draws us in again, this time with her ease, grace and wit, in a satisfying novel that spans generations, lives, and fates."
—Meg Wolitzer, The New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion

"It’s a marvelous story full of plot twists, intricacies, and depth in events that the reader will not see coming. Perfect for fans of character-based novels such as those by Sally Rooney or Lauren Groff."
—Library Journal

"Korelitz (The Plot) returns with an irresistible dramedy of errors about a singularly unhappy family. This is a sizzler."
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review

"It's a slow burn, but this complex and layered story of the Oppenheimer family is worth hanging on...."
—Good Housekeeping, "The 30 Best and Most-Anticipated Books of 2022 (So Far)"

From the Publisher

03/01/2022

This saga of the New York City-based Oppenheimer family begins with the meeting of Salo and Johanna Oppenheimer under less-than-ideal circumstances, leading to a strange marriage more of convenience than of love. Johanna struggles with infertility but later manages to have triplets—Lewyn, Sally, and Harrison—through in vitro fertilization. The triplets are not close, and the siblings work progressively harder to get away from the family. Johanna's longing for a happy family leads her to conceive a fourth child, Phoebe. But does the arrival of the latecomer yield the results Johanna hoped for? Korelitz (The Plot) touches on the themes of religion, the infidelity of Salo, wealth, and deceptions over the years, as well as, eventually, the grown Phoebe's hopes to reunite all of them into a real family. VERDICT Readers expecting a mystery might want to look elsewhere, as this is more of a literary tale defining what it means to be a family. It's a marvelous story full of plot twists, intricacies, and depth in events that the reader will not see coming. Perfect for fans of character-based novels such as those by Sally Rooney or Lauren Groff.—Bill Anderson

Library Journal

2022-01-26
A fatal car crash sets the stage for a fraught marriage and family life.

Drifting through his privileged existence, 20-year-old Salo Oppenheimer is further unmoored after a Jeep he’s driving flips and kills two passengers. On a subsequent trip to Europe, a rapturous encounter with a Cy Twombly painting launches his passionate engagement with cutting-edge art. He’s less engaged with Johanna Hirsch, even though he marries her (it’s expected) and, after three childless years, agrees to IVF, which results in four embryos and the birth of triplets Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally. Salo’s real life is in the Brooklyn warehouse where he keeps his art collection—and with Stella, a fellow survivor of the crash whom he meets again some years later; soon they are lovers and have a son. Korelitz deftly limns this tension-riddled setup and the resulting Oppenheimer family dysfunction. Harrison, supersmart and arrogant, looks down on his siblings. Shut-off Lewyn seems to have imbibed his brother’s dismissive assessment of him. Sally keeps secrets from herself and others. Johanna, wracked by a longing for connection neither her children nor husband care to fulfill, learns of Salo’s other family on the eve of the triplets’ departure for college and decides to have the fourth embryo thawed and gestated by a surrogate; Phoebe is born in June 2000, shortly before Lewyn and Sally depart for determinedly separate lives at Cornell and Harrison for an ultra-alternative school that, somewhat paradoxically, nurtures his aggressively conservative views. Part 2, which chronicles the triplets’ college years, is long and at times alienating; Korelitz makes no attempt to soften the siblings’ often mean behavior, which climaxes in an ugly scene at their 19th birthday party in September 2001. It pays off in Part 3, narrated by latecomer Phoebe, now 17 and charged with healing her family’s gaping wounds. The resolution, complete with a wedding, persuasively and touchingly affirms that even the most damaged people can grow and change.

A bit slow in the middle section but on balance, a satisfyingly twisty tale rooted in complex characterizations.

Kirkus Reviews

Golden Voice Julia Whelan expertly narrates the unhappy story of the wealthy Oppenheimer family of New York. From the parents’ struggling marriage to the lack of sibling bonding among the IVF triplets and the children’s outright disdain for their parents, Whelan’s narration creates specific voices, pitches, cadences, and accents where needed for all the characters, both major and minor. By the time the fourth child is born, the listener is so compelled by this family that they’re desperate for resolution. Whelan narrates as though she were acting out the Oppenheimers’ history on stage, playing each character part. She paints the background detail as vividly as she does the characters. L.M.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JULY 2022 - AudioFile