A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff

Release date: 2008 / 399 pages

Synopsis (from back cover): “… Joanna Smith Rakoff’s richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century.”

First lines: “On a gray October day in 1998, Lillian Roth found herself walking down the stone-floored aisle of Temple Emanu-El, clad in a gown of dark ivory sain and flanked by her thin, smiling parents, who had flown into New York from Los Angeles a mere seven days earlier, still in mild shock that their obstreperous daughter was submitting to the ancient rite of marriage.”

Review:

I read A Fortunate Age for Barnes and Noble’s ARC book club while on vacation in Florida and had a distinct sense of de ja vu.  First, because it was about a group of college grads navigating their way into and through young adulthood – finding jobs, maintaining/beginning/ending relationships, finding their way into – and out of – marriage, etc.  Experiences common to all college grads, I imagine. 

The second reason I felt as if A Fortunate Age was familiar was because I had just finished The Northern Clemency (review coming next Wednesday), and the two novels are eerily similar in their focus on characters without a discernable plot. 

The setting and time periods of each were different, and Rakoff includes much more daily minutia, but the similarities in structure and narration were undeniable.  I couldn’t help but wonder if this may be the “new thing” in fiction – an emphasis on character development to the exclusion of plot and theme.

I must admit, I liked Clemency better, but this may be because I am more interested in learning about how others have chosen their lives – other generations, other countries – and A Fortunate Age was, in some ways, pretty similar to what I imagine many of my former college roommates experienced in their lives. 

A Fortunate Age is set in New York City, and as Mayor Bloomberg said on New Year’s Eve, New Yorkers think NYC is the center of the universe, so this myopia permeates the novel (people defining their self-worth by a particular borough or neighborhood and other clichés so commonly found in fiction set in NYC). 

I also struggled to care about any of the characters in this novel.  I found them neither particularly interesting nor significant – and 400 pages was dreadfully long to spend with any of them.  I found myself resenting the fact that I had to turn from my own life – which I really like (especially when I’m on a beach with my family) – to enter the details of a group of people I really would have rather not gotten to know. 

In addition, Rakoff has this habit of flirting with plot, almost teasing the reader that the novel is about to get interesting, and then flashing forward three years, ignoring or neglecting the teaser. 

For example, the narration switches from character to character, but, similar to Clemency, we get a LOT of detail about that character for at least a week or so.  We wade through the excruciating detail of how someone puts down the coffee creamer (so we think this must be hinting at something… it’s not) or the obsessive self-analysis of where the character is living or not living, or how different she is from her parents, etc…  and then we get a tidbit like the character discovering her best friend’s husband is cheating.  Finally, a potentially interesting twist!  Will the character tell her friend or not?  What would we do in this situation?  But then the chapter ends and 200 pages and three years LATER we find out (as an aside) that the character decided not to reveal this information to her friend.  This is one of many examples of this sort of teasing. 

Now, since this is a Barnes and Noble selection for their on-line book club, I will be curious to read what others thought.  And, while I did not enjoy it, I will be sure to present other perspectives, too. 

If my review did not dissuade you, please leave me a comment for a chance at a free copy!

Welcome back!