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Published Apr 2017
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From a remarkable new voice in fiction, Bethany Ball, comes a transporting debut; a hilarious multigenerational family saga set in Israel, New York, and Los Angeles that explores the secrets and gossip-filled lives of a kibbutz community near Jerusalem.
Meet Marc Solomon, an Israeli ex-Navy commando now living in L.A., who is falsely accused of money laundering through his asset management firm. As the Solomons' Santa Monica home is raided, Marc's American wife, Carolyn - concealing her own dark past - makes hopeless attempts to hold their family of five together. But news of the scandal makes its way from America to the rest of the Solomon clan on the kibbutz in the Jordan River Valley. There we encounter various members of the family and the community - from Marc's self-absorbed movie actress sister, Shira, and her forgotten son Joseph; to his rich and powerful construction magnate father, Yakov; to his former star-crossed love, Maya; and his brother-in-law Guy Gever, a local ranger turned - artist." As the secrets and rumors of the kibbutz are revealed through various memories and tales, we witness the things that keep the Solomons together, and those that tear them apart.
Reminiscent of Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, and told with razor-sharp humor and elegant acuity, What to Do About the Solomons is an exhilarating first book from a bright new star in fiction.
"For all its humor, penetrating disillusionment underlies Ball's memorable portrait of a family, once driven by pioneer spirit, now plagued by overextension and loss of direction, unsure what to do with its legacy, teetering between resentment, remorse, and resilience." - Publishers Weekly
"Ball, with great humor, profound wit, and notable insight, vividly captures a singular family." - Booklist
"Ball's prose is compulsively readable, almost addictive, and she has a wicked sense of humor." - Kirkus
"A riveting family drama which feels at once solidly classic and bitingly contemporary; if Transparent and A Thousand Acres snuck off and had a kid, you'd have What To Do About The Solomons. With their screw-ups, their sadnesses, their pasts catching up on them and their futures slamming in hard, these people are fascinating to be with and oddly hard to leave. Isn't that always the way with family - as long as they're not your own?" - Belinda McKeon, author of Tender
"Bethany Ball lays bare the complexities of modern life in prose that has the resonant simplicity of a fairy tale. Readers who love I.B. Singer and Grace Paley now have another writer to adore." - Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening
"Bethany Ball, in her fearless literary debut, goes deep into contemporary life to give the reader characters so alive we have met them and a story so true it takes fiction to tell it. From Israel to Manhattan to Connecticut and back, on a bridge of family, money, lies, drugs, and false accusations. For the reader, a knock on the door will never be the same." - Scott Wolven, author of Controlled Burn
"Bethany Ball is a sharp, sensitive writer whose gift for details - a gesture, an article of clothing, a square stone, a meal eaten by a lonely, neglected ten-year-old - reveals, magically, whole worlds. She is both tender and relentless with her characters: her affection for them is palpable, yet she subjects them to exquisitely revealing examinations. We're lucky she does, for here in What to Do About the Solomons a family and its most harrowing moments come to life so completely we forget that we're not reading about ourselves and our own families." - Nelly Reifler, author of Elect H. Mouse State Judge and See Through
"In What to Do About the Solomons, Bethany Ball peels back the manicured surface of family and community to surgically expose a world of hurt. Told in a razor-sharp prose that takes no prisoners, this is that rare book that can make you laugh while it's breaking your heart. I couldn't get enough." - David Hollander, author of L.I.E.
This information about What To Do About The Solomons was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bethany Ball was born and raised in Detroit and has lived in Santa Fe, New Jersey, Miami, and Israel. She now lives in New York with her family.
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