May 1, 2023
Over the course of a year, an affluent Jewish family implodes. When Scott Greenspan, a cardiologist overseeing a clinical trial, starts falsifying blood samples, his intentions are more or less (rather less) innocent. He's just lost a lot of money on an investment he kept secret from his wife, and in the meantime, he needs to make a payment on his mother's expensive retirement home. Scott's "whole life," Ridker writes, "he'd been climbing a ladder to respectable living....He'd proceeded with caution, taking the slow route, secure in the knowledge that the world would reward his patience as it had rewarded his hard work and intellect." The ease with which he can cheat comes as a revelation. Scott is caught, of course, and the repercussions of his actions, for himself and his entire family, inform Ridker's engaging but uneven novel. In alternating chapters, Ridker visits each family member, including Scott's wife, Deb, who has suggested that the two open their marriage; Maya, their daughter, who works an entry-level position at a prestigious publishing company; and Gideon, their son, who had planned on applying to medical school but now, in the wake of his father's misconduct, flails about, uncertain how to proceed. Ridker clearly owes a debt to Jonathan Franzen, whose influence is plain. But each of Ridker's points of satire--busybody suburban housewives, predatory high school teachers, the publishing industry as a whole--is too predictably on-the-nose to be funny or surprising or fresh. Sometimes the satire veers into the slapstick. At one point, for example, a housewife on one of Deb's many volunteer committees says, "We have a protocol for this." She goes on, "But I can't remember what it is." And while Scott and Gideon feel more or less like full-fledged characters, Deb and Maya most assuredly do not. The novel covers well-traveled terrain with few surprises.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from May 15, 2023
Ridker’s slashing satire of upper-middle-class life (after The Altruists) turns on the foibles of a seemingly charmed Jewish family in Brookline, Mass. Scott Greenspan is a well-respected cardiac surgeon. His wife, Deb, is known for her good work on various school and synagogue activities. Their daughter, Maya, works at a prestigious New York publishing house, while her younger brother, Gideon, is a biology major at Columbia and hopes to become a doctor. The Greenspans’ perfect facade is shattered after Scott is caught falsifying data on a clinical trial. In the wake of this scandal, Deb moves in with her lesbian lover, who runs a network of military-inspired charter schools; Maya resumes an unhealthy relationship with the high school English teacher who seduced her when she was 17; and Gideon drops out of college, goes to Israel on a Birthright tour, and refuses to return home from the Middle East. Meanwhile, Scott fights to restore his reputation, win back Deb, and put his family back together. Ridker’s account of characters in free fall is painfully funny, filled with cringeworthy scenes that expose them at their most needy. Yet he never loses sight of their basic humanity. This rivals Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman is in Trouble in its pitch-perfect portrayal of Jewish American life.
June 1, 2023
Ridker's (The Altruists, 2019) wry second novel imagines the consequences for a family of four when, in a Boston suburb in 2013, cardiologist father Scott makes the rash decision to fund his demanding mother's nursing home stay by falsifying data in a research study and pocketing the money that should have gone to research subjects. He clumsily attempts to conceal his actions, but they are quickly uncovered, and he is barred from further research. His wife, already dissatisfied with the marriage, leaves him. Their daughter, who works at a low-level job in publishing, takes up with a teacher she was infatuated with in high school, and their son, formerly aspiring to be a doctor, moves to Israel and then Syria, remaining incommunicado. Ridker keeps these varied plots moving nimbly, neatly balancing broad satire with a hint of compassion for characters whose lives are spinning wildly out of control. Readers who like their family drama with a sharp edge and a generous helping of moral dilemmas will be satisfied with this one.
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