Description

Like The Group, Mary McCarthy's classic tale about coming of age in New York, 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.

There's Lil, a would-be scholar whose marriage to an egotistical writer initially brings the group back together (and ultimately drives it apart); Beth, who struggles to let go of her old beau Dave, a onetime piano prodigy trapped by his own insecurity; Emily, an actor perpetually on the verge of success -- and starvation -- who grapples with her jealousy of Tal, whose acting career has taken off. At the center of their orbit is wry, charismatic Sadie Peregrine, who coolly observes her friends' mistakes but can't quite manage to avoid making her own. As they begin their careers, marry, and have children, they must navigate the shifting dynamics of their friendships and of the world around them.

Set against the backdrop of the vast economic and political changes of the era -- from the decadent age of dot-com millionaires to the sobering post-September 2001 landscape -- Smith Rakoff's deeply affecting characters and incisive social commentary are reminiscent of the great Victorian novels. This brilliant and ambitious debut captures a generation and heralds the arrival of a bold and important new writer.

Praise for A Fortunate Age…

"Funny, compassionate and observant...the story is almost compulsively readable...Rakoff endows each [character] with a generous intelligence." -- The Los Angeles Times

"Ms. Rakoff's prose is funny and acerbic, and she gets many details...incredibly right...A Fortunate Age leaves a lasting impression." -- The New York Observer

"The attempt of each generation to carve out a bearable adult identity commands irresistible interest." -- The New York Times Book Review

"[A] richly drawn narrative...Smith Rakoff's social commentary remains both engaging and satisfying in its breadth and depth...expansive and elegantly executed" -- New York Daily News

"Superb, acutely insightful...a modern-day version of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence...deeply complex...beautiful and magical, as well as dark." -- TheRumpus.net

"The liberal-arts grads coming of age in Smith Rakoff's...New York City are indeed a fortunate bunch...the story lines...are compellingly drawn." -- Entertainment Weekly

"[A] delight....Writing with seamless transparency and intelligence, Rakoff has a light and witty touch...a dead-on psychological and social page-turner." -- Publishers Weekly Galley Talk

"Rakoff's mesmerizing debut opens with a wedding and closes with a funeral. In between, the novel provides a pitch perfect portrait of the generation that came of age in the 1990s. If this smart, thoroughly absorbing novel recalls The Group, it also recalls the seminal work of Anne Beattie in the seventies and Jay McInerney in the eighties. Like them, Rakoff captures a certain time and place with heartbreaking clarity."-- Booklist (starred)

"A wonderful, funny and spot-on portrait of my clumsy generation that brings to mind such hallmarks as Mary McCarthy's The Group, Jay McInerney's Brightness Falls, and Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children."-- Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook

"Joanna Smith Rakoff has cast a brilliant and glittering spell with this fierce debut. Her social observations are not only spot-on but often wickedly funny...She has captured both a generation and a landscape, and I'm still marveling at how she managed to pull off this page-turning cocktail of intelligence and desire."-- Joanna Hershon, author of The German Bride