The Nest: Book summary and reviews of The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Reader Reviews

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Linda

Wonderful reality!
Just realized I never logged in to rate, although I had started a discussion. This book was wonderfully real...warts and all. Set in NYC made me homesick but in a good way...and the characters were eerily familiar...totally engrossing and entertaining.

Cathryn Conroy

Unlike Most of the Reader Reviewers, I Liked This Book!
I liked this book! And it would appear that based on many of the reader reviews this is distinctly a minority opinion.

Granted, it's not great literature, but most definitely it is not as awful as so many are depicting it. Written by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, this is a story about well-off New Yorkers and their bad boy (or bad girl) ways. And it's fun to read, even though the plot is fairly—but not entirely—predictable.

The four Plumb siblings, Leo, Beatrice, Jack, and Melody, have known for decades that when Melody, the youngest, turns 40, they will inherit what their eccentric father thought of as nothing more than a small nest egg. A bit of extra money in midlife to pay down a mortgage or put a kid through college. Nothing life-changing. But their deceased daddy didn't count on a runaway stock market that left the little nest egg hurtling toward $2 million. Then their equally-eccentric mother, who is the fund's trustee, is forced to use "the Nest," as the kids call it, to bail out one of the sibs after a scandal and keep the family name out of the gossip pages. The problem is that the others were totally counting on this money—as in, they could each be financially ruined if they don't get it. But the book is so much more than that. The four are each having a life crisis—the kind that money can't fix. And that is the heart and soul of the story.

The book is an interesting examination of the power of money—actually, just the idea of money—for good and evil and how that power can take over and distort an otherwise good life.

Mla08080

Counting Your Chickens
I can always tell when I enjoy a book because I choose to finish it in the early morning. It's my best reading time, before anyone else gets up, before any responsibilities may kick in, usually before sunrise. So it was with The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. The novel starts out catching your immediate interest when a unhappily married man, Leo Plumb, escapes his cousin's wedding reception to lure one of the waitresses to his car. "She moved through the crowd with a lambent glow—partly because the setting sun was bathing the eastern end of Long Island an indecent pink, partly because of the truly excellent cocaine wreaking havoc with Leo’s synapses. The bubbles rising and falling on Matilda’s tray felt like an ecstatic summons, an invitation meant just for him." His indiscretion has tragic consequences that affects the releasing of the family Nest, money bequeathed from their father to be doled out when the youngest of the four siblings turns 40. And so begins the unraveling of the plot as we are provided alternating chapters of the Plumb family and how each one had expected to use that money, how each one's plan is now ruined by Leo.

I enjoyed the structure of the novel and the character development. Besides the smart, usually high, but always charming oldest child, Leo, there is Jack, his gay brother who deals in antiques and is trying to hide from his loving partner, Walker, that he has taken out a loan on the house against the hope of the Nest. Beatrice, Leo's sister, works for an online literary magazine and has stalled as a writer of promise. Her initial well received stories were all thinly described portraits of Leo. The youngest, Melody, who turns 40 soon, is struggling to keep her twin daughters in good schools, and SAT tutors as college looms with the next year. Again the Nest was her solution for college tuition. There are several side characters as well, including Stephanie, Leo's possible love interest and savior, and her Brooklyn neighbor whose 9/11 secret becomes a subplot.

I enjoyed seeing the development of the characters as they struggle through their anger. The build up to the final 40th birthday diner was well developed and the resolution satisfying. I would recommend this as an enjoyable portrait and a timely warning for the children of the baby boomers.

Sandi W.

Dysfunctional...
2.5 stars
The story line in this novel was a great idea. It started out with a lot of potential. The authors prose was easy to read and I felt overall her words moved well. The problem stemmed from all the unneeded characters and extras that were thrown into this story. They were very confusing, drug the premise of the story down, parts were just plain boring, hard for any main character follow through, and just way too many characters. Although easy to read, page by page, this book was easy to put down and hard to pick back up.

This is the story of 4 siblings who expected to gain a sizeable inheritance from their deceased father, once the youngest turned 40 years old. However before that happened one of the siblings got into a bad car wreck and their mother, guardian of the inheritance, signed away all the money to keep that child out of litigation. The story tells of each siblings reason for needing the money and how the one who benefited from all the money planned to pay his sibling back.