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The Invaders
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Over the course of a summer in a wealthy Connecticut community, a forty-something woman and her college-age stepson’s lives fall apart in a series of violent shocks.
Cheryl has never been the right kind of country-club wife. She's always felt like an outsider, and now, in her mid-forties—facing the harsh realities of aging while her marriage disintegrates and her troubled stepson, Teddy, is kicked out of college—she feels cast adrift by the sparkling seaside community of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut. So when Teddy shows up at home just as a storm brewing off the coast threatens to destroy the precarious safe haven of the cove, she joins him in an epic downward spiral.
The Invaders, a searing follow-up to Karolina Waclawiak’s critically acclaimed debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, casts a harsh light on the glossy sheen of even the most “perfect” lives in America's exclusive beach communities. With sharp wit and dark humor, The Invaders exposes the lies and insecurities that run like faultlines through our culture, threatening to pitch bored housewives, pill-popping children, and suspicious neighbors headlong into the suburban abyss.
Cheryl has never been the right kind of country-club wife. She's always felt like an outsider, and now, in her mid-forties—facing the harsh realities of aging while her marriage disintegrates and her troubled stepson, Teddy, is kicked out of college—she feels cast adrift by the sparkling seaside community of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut. So when Teddy shows up at home just as a storm brewing off the coast threatens to destroy the precarious safe haven of the cove, she joins him in an epic downward spiral.
The Invaders, a searing follow-up to Karolina Waclawiak’s critically acclaimed debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, casts a harsh light on the glossy sheen of even the most “perfect” lives in America's exclusive beach communities. With sharp wit and dark humor, The Invaders exposes the lies and insecurities that run like faultlines through our culture, threatening to pitch bored housewives, pill-popping children, and suspicious neighbors headlong into the suburban abyss.
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereInformazioni sul libro
The Invaders
Descrizione
Over the course of a summer in a wealthy Connecticut community, a forty-something woman and her college-age stepson’s lives fall apart in a series of violent shocks.
Cheryl has never been the right kind of country-club wife. She's always felt like an outsider, and now, in her mid-forties—facing the harsh realities of aging while her marriage disintegrates and her troubled stepson, Teddy, is kicked out of college—she feels cast adrift by the sparkling seaside community of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut. So when Teddy shows up at home just as a storm brewing off the coast threatens to destroy the precarious safe haven of the cove, she joins him in an epic downward spiral.
The Invaders, a searing follow-up to Karolina Waclawiak’s critically acclaimed debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, casts a harsh light on the glossy sheen of even the most “perfect” lives in America's exclusive beach communities. With sharp wit and dark humor, The Invaders exposes the lies and insecurities that run like faultlines through our culture, threatening to pitch bored housewives, pill-popping children, and suspicious neighbors headlong into the suburban abyss.
Cheryl has never been the right kind of country-club wife. She's always felt like an outsider, and now, in her mid-forties—facing the harsh realities of aging while her marriage disintegrates and her troubled stepson, Teddy, is kicked out of college—she feels cast adrift by the sparkling seaside community of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut. So when Teddy shows up at home just as a storm brewing off the coast threatens to destroy the precarious safe haven of the cove, she joins him in an epic downward spiral.
The Invaders, a searing follow-up to Karolina Waclawiak’s critically acclaimed debut novel, How to Get Into the Twin Palms, casts a harsh light on the glossy sheen of even the most “perfect” lives in America's exclusive beach communities. With sharp wit and dark humor, The Invaders exposes the lies and insecurities that run like faultlines through our culture, threatening to pitch bored housewives, pill-popping children, and suspicious neighbors headlong into the suburban abyss.
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Recensioni
Not that suspenseful but fairly gripping story of east coast beach resort populated by rich men and trophy wives, all somewhat deranged. Townies play a minor role.
Rating: 3I love the idea of this book, but the execution is just too on the surface -- you can see all of the plot machinery turning. It's the book equivalent of a dress with an exposed zipper. It feels more like an outline than an actual novel, which makes it very hard to fully engage with it.
Still, I'm awarding a bonus star for an strong and effective ending -- strong enough that I'll keep an eye out for the author's next book.
Rating: 3Still, I'm awarding a bonus star for an strong and effective ending -- strong enough that I'll keep an eye out for the author's next book.
Here is Louis C.K. on "White People Problems": "That's where your life is amazing, so you just make shit up to be upset about." White People Problems can be amusing in small doses; when made the basis of an entire novel, as Karolina Waclawiak has done in The Invaders, however, such complaints become boring. There is not enough "bite" in Waclawiak's writing to make her skewering of the rich inhabitants of Little Neck Cove, Connecticut, either entertaining or morally instructive. Once Waclawiak adds an ending which comes completely out of left field, the reader is relieved to roll her eyes and close the (metaphorical) cover.Those looking for an opportunity to mock the petty concerns of the insanely wealthy would do better to check out Kevin Kwan's China Rich Girlfriend, which has the advantage of an exotic locale to go along with its sharper wit.I received a free copy of The Invaders through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 2Doesn't everybody want to read about snobby, rich, exclusive white people? No? Me neither. This is essentially the story of two outsiders - one who has always been on the outside due to her poor upbringing, and one who becomes an outsider following an accident. I see how these characters are supposed to be sympathetic, but I'm not buying. Maybe I shouldn't have read this at the same time I was listening to Fates and Furies...
Rating: 1Everyone's drowning here, and not just because it's a pretty and exclusive little beach town on the Long Island Sound in Connecticut. The women are overcome by Botox, the men are overwhelmed by adultery opportunities, and the kids are reveling in privilege: "I had a leg up and that made it easier to slack off." The story of a sad summer season is told alternately by Teddy and his stepmother Cheryl. Teddy's mother killed herself with drink and a plunge into the ocean, understandable as Teddy's father Jeffrey reveals his contempt for his second wife and his overindulgent disregard for his son.The doings at the country club, including fencing off the sailboats from the younger members in order to keep out non-resident fishermen and their families, are repulsive. The big storm coming is almost a relief. This is probably an accurate picture of 1% territory, but it ain't pretty.
Rating: 4I liked Karolina Waclawiak's first novel and I liked this one even more. Both unfortunately suffered from uneven endings that detracted a bit from the strength of the rest, but they are still worth the read for great writing about usual characters with unusual inner lives.
Rating: 4Having heard this described as “rich people behaving badly” I decided to check it out since it can be a cynical and sometimes light-hearted experience. We never think of rich people as having real problems, do we? Money solves everything, right? To some degree it does, but it also causes problems that wouldn’t exist if it didn’t. There isn’t much light-hearted about this book and not too many folks you’d want to be fast friends with either. Teddy illustrates my points above quite well. He distinguishes himself from those poor shlubs who actually have to try for things. The need to achieve in order to have money or self-esteem. Teddy needs neither and having flunked out of Dartmouth he returns to Daddy hoping he can just coast through life on a generous allowance. His time to do with whatever he wants which is mostly getting high, screwing and sailing. He’s a pretty deluded asshole, but his perspective is sometimes sharply insightful. Without Daddy’s money, that staggering arrogance and entitlement wouldn’t exist and Teddy would probably have become a useful human being. As it is, one has to wonder about that car crash. Deliberate way to become just disabled enough to get the sympathy vote? After all, even a trust-fund loser is just a loser.Cheryl is one of the eponymous invaders to this exclusive enclave (although not so exclusive as the Hamptons) and she’s not as sharply drawn as she might have been. She’s still trying to fit in, to do the right things. Sometimes she claims to no longer care, but she never acts like it. With little to no effort, her neighbors get her to side with them against more egregious invaders; townies, more specifically brown townies. Fear and the us v. them mentality prevail and there’s a fence where there wasn’t one before, blocking everyone off from most of the beach. People who have everything have to manufacture hardships and strife and a lot of it here is so trivial and silly that the book felt unfinished.The writing is odd. Everyone has the most intense conversations all the time. No casual chit chat or small talk for these people. It’s all naked emotions and challenges. At the same time there is an unresolved, vague feeling to a lot of the prose. Not a lot is clearly explained, defined or described. Cheryl’s relationship with her family for example. She is alarmed by her mother’s disappearance, but does nothing to clarify or figure out what happened. It just hangs. As does her severance from her sisters which we get the idea is tied so some incident in the past that possibly resulted in the death of one of them. But it isn’t clear. And Cheryl’s weird phone calls; kind of like prank calls, but somehow more serious and sometimes welcomed by the person on the other end. It went nowhere and had no import and seemed like just a quirky add on. And the ending is just so over-the-top it’s humorous. I think it was supposed to be all metaphor-ey and a comeuppance for the revolting rich people (the worst invaders, the lot of them), but they weren’t revolting enough and it just came off as heavy-handed (see, money can’t protect you from Mother Nature!).
Rating: 2