In a Connecticut town on the Long Island Sound, the summer is underway and the wealthy locals are summoning up their annual resentments against the day-trippers who descend on their beaches and fishing spots. Cheryl, an ageing former trophy wife, and her stepson Teddy, home in disgrace after expulsion from college, are both facing grim futures from within their ostensibly privileged positions. When a series of disasters both natural and man-made occur, resentment flares into overt hostility, and the town begins to come apart at the seams.
From an interesting premise, this book never quite manages to deliver on all its promises. There are several authorial decisions in here that I thought could have been better managed, and which lend things rather too much of a soap opera feel, where the novel could have instead remained true to its original tone. Where do trophy wives go when they’ve outlived the gleam of the new? Where, for that matter, have they come from? (Teddy I’m less interested in, though the novel tries to trap me into sympathy for him, and even succeeded for a few moments at a time.) I felt particularly cheated by the ending, which didn’t resolve anything satisfactorily.
I’ve read one review of this book which accused it of telling instead of showing, and to an extent that’s probably fair. That said, I think Waclawiak does do a pretty good job of portraying this dreadful society of rich husbands and kept wives: it’s believable while at the same time exaggerated, and it really does seem like the kind of place that would drive any reasonable person to a drug habit. In all, it’s a book that will pleasantly occupy a couple of hours of your life, but not anything to go out of your way for.
Trigger warning: sexual violence.