The Altruists
Ratings1
Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
A New York Times Editors' Choice "[An] intelligent, funny, and remarkably assured first novel. . . . [Andrew Ridker establishes] himself as a big, promising talent. . . . Hilarious. . . . Astute and highly entertaining. . . . Outstanding." --The New York Times Book Review "With humor and warmth, Ridker explores the meaning of family and its inevitable baggage. . . . A relatable, unforgettable view of regular people making mistakes and somehow finding their way back to each other." --People (Book of the Week) "[A] strikingly assured debut. . . . A novel that grows more complex and more uproarious by the page, culminating in an unforgettable climax." --Entertainment Weekly (The Must List) A Real Simple Best Book of the Year (So Far) A vibrant and perceptive novel about a father's plot to win back his children's inheritance Arthur Alter is in trouble. A middling professor at a Midwestern college, he can't afford his mortgage, he's exasperated his much-younger girlfriend, and his kids won't speak to him. And then there's the money--the small fortune his late wife, Francine, kept secret, which she bequeathed directly to his children. Those children are Ethan, an anxious recluse living off his mother's money on a choice plot of Brooklyn real estate, and Maggie, a would-be do-gooder trying to fashion herself a noble life of self-imposed poverty. On the verge of losing the family home, Arthur invites his children back to St. Louis under the guise of a reconciliation. But in doing so, he unwittingly unleashes a Pandora's box of age-old resentments and long-buried memories--memories that orbit Francine, the matriarch whose life may hold the key to keeping them together. Spanning New York, Paris, Boston, St. Louis, and a small desert outpost in Zimbabwe, The Altruists is a darkly funny (and ultimately tender) family saga that confronts the divide between baby boomers and their millennial offspring. It's a novel about money, privilege, politics, campus culture, dating, talk therapy, rural sanitation, infidelity, kink, the American beer industry, and what it means to be a "good person."
Reviews with the most likes.
I really enjoyed this entertaining tale of woe about a dysfunctional family coping with the loss of the mother. Arthur, a failing professor of engineering has realised he can't afford the family home anymore and the only solution to his problems is to tap his two children for the inheritance his wife only left for his children. Unfortunately, he's not on good terms with them. Ethan has spent all his inheritance after quitting his job and buying an overpriced apartment, and he is stuck in a kind of extended state of inertia, whereas Maggie has decided not to spend anything at all and steals things to give the money to charity. The themes running through the novel are that their attempts to help other people backfire continually because of their self-interest (there are similarities in that respect to Franzen's Crossroads) and how money and the attitude to money can affect family relationships. The characters are very well drawn and this is a funny, sometimes quite touching novel which I recommend.
