This Beautiful Life

This book lost me from hello, and whilst at times it made an effort to win me back I never really bought it.
The premise is good one, its what caught my attention, and I was excited to receive an uncorrected proof from Waterstones. Examining the worst challenges a family can face from the relative safety of a book can make for very thought provoking reading. But this is no "We Need to Talk About Kevin."
I felt the main barrier to me connecting with this book was the characters, and the lives they led. Private school, high society, power jobs, spoilt children...there was nothing there that I could relate to, and more than that there was no humility. Possibly this is to show that even family disasters can happen in the "perfect" segment of society...but that isn't how it translates to paper. That side of it left me cold, it reminded me of a certain strain of chick-lit that has never attracted me. The characters came across as contrived and thoroughly dislikeable. As a result, I didn't care what happened to any of them - in my mind they all deserved a poor outcome.
Basically, this book failed to move me in the way I had hoped it would. Its probably more suited to women who are outgrowing chick-lit, venturing into something with a bit more meat but who need the security blanket of that genre.

This isn't a type of novel I normally read, but the subject matter sounded like a dilemma that unfortunately is becoming almost commonplace. I was curious about how a family would survive it.Richard and Liz Bergamot have a 15 year old son, Jake, and a 6 year old daughter, Coco. Coco was adopted from China. They had lived happily in Ithaca, NY for some time when Richard accepted a dream job in New York City. Settling in Manhattan was difficult for Liz and Jake, who longed for the simpler life in Ithaca. The children were in private schools with wealthy families' children and Liz struggled to fit in. Only Richard was profoundly happy, and possibly Coco.Then Jake goes to a party with his friends, gets in over his head because he drinks too much and tries to be one of the guys. He later receives a sexy video email from a younger girl, and does absolutely the wrong thing - he forwards it to his friend. The effect of this mistake on all of them, but especially Jake, is traumatic. The reaction of each member of the family is shown to the reader, who becomes increasingly afraid for them all. I fear some readers will decide it's Manhattan or the wealthy kids who are to blame for what happens, but the same thing could have happened in Ithaca or any other town in America. Like sexting, it is happening all around us.We all ruefully recall our own dumb teenage mistakes, but now those mistakes happen all too publicly. Thanks to cell phones, computers, and all the other electronic gadgets most kids have access to, the pictures and words that can be terribly damaging are broadcast all over the world. Meanwhile parenting, always a tough job, increases in difficulty.If you have the stomach to read about a parent's worst nightmare, you will want to read This Beautiful Life. The book is insightful and delves deeply into this family's journey through that nightmare. I received the book from Amazon Vine.

This book was very disappointing. The writing was horrible. The ending was ridiculous. Didn't care for most of the characters.

Narrated by Hillary Huber. This is really more about the internal processes that parents Richard and Liz and their teenage son Jake go through in the wake of the sex video scandal. Although the story is a little too navel-gazing for me, I enjoyed Huber's performance as she voices each character's inner turmoil with emotional depth, giving the listener an intimate experience with the Bergamot family's story.

Interesting look into a family when trouble strikes. A solid read.

I was disappointed in this book. The premise should have made for an interesting story but it just didn't Get executed well. After a slow start, the central event, a sexting email from an 8th grade girl to the boy she has a crush on that goes viral, is presented well. Then, the effects on the family...just doesn't tie together very well. I think this could have been done better and kind of wish the author could have a "do-over." Doesn't live up to its potential.

Ifound this book to be rather slow. Fifteen year old Jake Bergamot recieves and then sends an explicit video that an eight grade girl sends him and the video goes viral.The scandal that ensues threatens the happiness of the entire family.

A book for todays generation that deals with what happens when a teenage girl forwards a sexually explicit email attachement of herself to a guy she is keen on. He without thinking forwards it on to a friend and soon it is all over the Internet. The book deals with how it affects the son who received it, his six year old sister, and his parents and their relationship.. They have moved into New York from a country area, and the husband is much more interested in his career and making money than caring for his family. His wife has given up her career to come to New York and is trying to nurture and support the family. This book , to me,. coud have been better. It promised so much. The beginning was set up well but I felt the end was rushed. There were parts where you got a glimpse of what it could have been, and those parts were moving However it did succeed in making me think about this issue that todays young generation faces.

The Bergamots are a typical upper-middle class family who recently relocated to New York City from Ithaca. There's Liz, a wound-way-too-tight, former art historian turned stay-at-home, semi-helicopter parent of a mom who has nothing better to do but e-stalk an ex-boyfriend's blog and obsess over whether she loves her kids too much.

She's married to Richard, whose prestigious and high-powered job at fictitious Astor University is the reason the Bergamot family relocated to New York City in the first place. There's adorable, spirited six year old Coco, whom Liz and Richard adopted from China and who has a coterie of friends at her swanky private school.

And then ... there's 15 year old Jake, just doing his best to fit in with his friends at his new school. He's on the cusp of the awkward beginnings of independence while trying to be cool and trying unsuccessfully to get the attention of Audrey, a girl he likes but who happens to be otherwise attached.

As I said, Jake's a typical 15 year old guy, with hormones firing on all cylinders and then some. So after he and 13 year old Daisy hook up at a party after too much beer, and he (rightfully so) tells her she's too young for such shenanigans, Daisy tries wooing him back by emailing him a video of herself in a compromising position. (Read between the lines here, folks, as I'm trying to avoid the spam and Google hits from getting even crazier than usual).

What does Jake do? Well, he's a little confused and perplexed and amused by said video ... but he does what any 15 year old boy would do: he forwards it to his best friend.

Who forwards it to his twin brother. Who forwards it to his best friend. And then, well, you can guess what happens. What poor naive Daisy (who is neither poor nor naive) thought would only be for Jake's eyes winds up going viral - and it's all Jake's fault.

This Beautiful Life focuses on the aftermath and the consequences that occur as a result of the video's explosion into cyberspace, and the destructive effect it has on the Bergamot family. Because of one mistake and one split-second decision, each person's sense of security and what is truly a "beautiful life" (this family doesn't want for anything, believe you me) is shaken. It's a compelling premise, and even though the novel is set in 2003 when all this was still uncharted territory, it resonates with parents and anyone who cares for kids because nine years later, we've seen where this Pandora's Box has led.

That being said, as much as I thought I would like this book (and wanted to), I felt that This Beautiful Life had too many issues in regard to the undeveloped characters, the writing style, and the plot. Let's start with the characters, shall we?

They could not have possibly been more stereotypical. I'll be blunt here: I'm tired of "yummy mummies" (an adjective/noun combo special that I cannot stand) whose playdates with their adorable cherubs consist of going to tea party sleepovers at The fucking Plaza Hotel and who whine about the headmistress of the school where their husbands are "legacy" alums, and how hard their goddamn lives are because they can't manage to decide if their kid should be taking ballet or African dance lessons, and who bitch about the cost of organic frozen strawberries. I hate people like that - which means that in reading This Beautiful Life, Liz Bergamot and her so-called friends were not people I cared to spend much time with.

(I do think the setting of 2003 worked against the novel in that aspect, at least for me. In these recessionary times when so many people continue to struggle, reading about people with lifestyles like that is kind of a turnoff to me.)

Liz and Richard's reactions to Daisy's video and their behavior in the aftermath of their son receiving and forwarding it struck me as ... maddening. I get wanting to protect your kid and being angry at the other party, and I know all too many parents carry the mantle of "my kid can do no wrong." I understand that. But there's absolutely no acceptance of personal responsibility here and no culpability on the part of the parents, no self-examination of what within themselves or within their family led to this. They don't go into counseling; they barely discuss the incident at all. They just disintegrate into themselves, which is sad and perhaps a realistic reaction, but a missed opportunity, in my view.

Not to mention, Richard's reaction as a father while watching this video of a 13 year old prancing to Beyonce was enough to give me the heebie-jeebies:

"And for all the video's dismal raunch, its tawdriness, for all its sexual immaturity and unknowingness, there is something about the way this girl has revealed herself, the way that she has offered herself, truly stripped herself bare, that is brave and powerful and potent and ridiculous and self-immolating and completely nuts. It speaks to him. Is he crazy? He feels crazier in this moment than he has ever felt in his life. He feels touched by it. And because the video is all of these things and more, because in some way it is truly the literal essence of what it means to be naked, because this Daisy makes herself completely vulnerable and open and 100 percent exposed, it also breaks Richard's heart." (pg. 118)

Stop right there and get thee to the nearest psychologist, dude. THE GIRL IS ALL OF 13 and making a suggestive video to get attention from a boy! I'm sorry, but there's nothing brave or empowering about that and the fact that this Dad is trying to convince me as a reader that there IS ... well, that's the sort of thing that makes my personal Creepmeter turn purple.

The overall writing style of was, in my opinion, somewhat bland and at times, confusing. For example, while waiting in their lawyer's office, Richard realizes that the lawyer

"holds [his] son's future in his hands. This is a little like waiting for a neurosurgeon, Richard thinks, and then stops the thought, blocks it. The analogy is too terrible and too frightening." (pg. 107).

Huh? Why? What am I missing here? (Richard's father died when Richard was young, but of a heart attack, not of a brain tumor or something, which would make this more logical.) There are several other head-scratching, what-the-? instances where this sort of thing occurred, so many things left unexplained, the ending rushed and seemingly tacked on as an afterthought. Even the symbolism and connection to The Great Gatsby seemed to be gratuitous, thrown in there as a tangent, when it could have been much stronger and emphasized.

Speaking of gratuitous, within the writing itself there are too many phrases and scenes that seem included for the shock value factor. This might sound a little hypocritical coming from me, as I fully admit to dropping an f-bomb or two on occasion, but Schulman's prose in this novel tends to include such off-putting phrases like "In Ithaca, where they lived pretty fucking happily the last ten years ..." (pg. 5) and nine pages later, "She reveled in the privacy. That was life in Ithaca, and it did not suck." (pg. 14). There's a description on page 175 of Liz "in yoga pants, a wife-beater." (What's wrong with saying a tank top?) Again, I'm no prude, but I found these word choices unnecessary.

Ultimately, in my opinion, I felt that there were too many instances throughout this novel where either the writing style or the characters' actions detracted from what promised to be a truly provocative story, for all the right reasons.

The one exception was with the character of Jake. I thought that Schulman captured Jake and his peers very well. Their conversations and actions, their angst and their desire to fit in, felt authentic to me. Even though I don't have a 15 year old, my work brings me into contact with many of them and the descriptions and the dialogue seemed real. It almost made me wonder if This Beautiful Life would have worked better - or have been more powerful - as more of a young adult focused novel. As it is, it seems to be one targeted for a parental audience, one that would strike fear into any parent's heart that this could happen to any of us.

But I think it misses the mark on that because these characters are too unrelatable personally and their 2003 lifestyle too distant from the 2012 reality that so many of us have. I can't imagine living anywhere near the kind of lifestyle that these people do. They're nothing like me. So if the theme is about the disintegration of a family after such an event and them wringing their hands over what they potentially stand to lose, then I'm not going to be able to identify with that because so many people have lost everything, you know? I know I'm harping on that, but I truly could not get past that aspect of this novel.

We also know much more now in terms of sexting and the legal ramifications, and it's hard to place oneself back almost a decade ago. But if the message is one of a cautionary one, one directed to a teenage audience, maybe that would have been better reinforced if the story itself had been told through Jake's eyes only ... just like the video was meant to be.

I wished I liked This Beautiful Life more than I did. Still, I'm grateful to TLC Book Tours for including me on the tour and for Harper Perennial for sending me a copy of the book in exchange for my (probably all too) honest review, for which I wasn't compensated in any way.

I had such high hopes for this book thinking that the concept was modern and intriguing. I had a feeling that I had read in the press about something similar happening to a family and initially was unsure whether it was fiction that had been based on fact. The structure of the book begins with a chapter each from Liz (mother), Richard (father) and Jake (son). The first two are a bit pointless and do nothing to inspire you to continue reading sadly. However, I continued in the hope it would get better and it does; marginally. The blurb is truly the best part of this novel though and the next stages in the story are not as exhilarating or urgent as the endorsements would have you believe.

Review haiku:Oh now I get it.Rich people in ManhattanAre very sad. Wah.

This Beautiful Life tells the story of the Bergamots, new to New York City and trying to find their place in this wealthy, no-holds-barred lifestyle. Just when it looks like Richard, Liz, 15 yr old Jake and their adopted, 6-yr-old daughter Coco have adapted to this strange new world, Jake receives a sexually explicit email from a young admirer and forwards it to a friend. The video astonishingly quickly goes viral and soon the whole school has seen it. The Bergamots struggle to deal with the repercussions as their new friends alternately despise and pity them.I had a really hard time relating to this book. It was never very clear to me why such a relatively small incident could so derail such a strong and close family. Their reactions made them seem overly sensitive and unable to recover from minor mistakes. How could the parents have gotten so far in life with such weak self-confidence and no way to recover from mishaps? Their response to the email snafu destroys their son and their relationship. Watching a disaster like this unfold is just painful, not my idea of an entertaining or even instructive read!I listened to the audio version of This Beautiful Life narrated by Hilary Huber. Maybe with a better story I would have liked her reading but here I just found it bland and forgettable.

This book opens with an email version of sexting - a video that a young girl sends of herself by email to a young man whom she likes. As often happens, what travels on the internet may suddenly, and without permission, go viral. This video did just that.What happens afterward is the premise of this story, or so I thought. The book itself turns out to be that of a family from Ithaca, New York, who relocates to Manhattan so that the husband can get a more rewarding job. His wife, though highly educated, no longer works as she now remains at home caring for their teenage son Jake and their adopted-from-China six-year-old daughter Coco.So what happens when a young teen receives a pornographic video and passes it on immediately to his friends? What are the ramifications - both legal and psychological? I'm still trying to figure that out. This novel, although well written and very much into the daily life of the mom and dad, did nothing to assuage the hunger I felt to understand more about the predicament of their son Jake. I felt that the author neglected this kid as much as the parents did.I enjoyed reading this book, but, in the end, I admit that I felt shortchanged by what I was not told.

I have had this book on my Wish List for a while so I was delighted to receive an advance proof copy. In my opinion, there were two main themes in the book. Kids are under so much pressure these days to grow up far too quickly and lose their innocence. Also, technology now is such a big part of most of our lives these days that we've forgotten where the boundaries should lie. A person can make a mistake and instead of it being an issue for a couple of days, maybe a week in their town, with all this technology the details can be forwarded on to millions of people and end up becoming a front-page news story. I thought the author dealt with these really well. What I liked about the book is that it made me think - it would be a really great pick for a book club. I didn't connect as much with a couple of the characters and there was one passage that I felt was needlessly graphic but overall a really, interesting read.

This Beautiful Life By Helen Schulman Jake Bergamot is an 15 yr old boy in NYC. He receives an inappropriate email from a young girl begging for his attention. He forwards it to a friend, and so on and so on. These boys that forward the email are removed from school, the word lawsuit, expulsion and crime are on the lips of everyone involved. The parents are distraught. This situation puts an enormous stress on Jakes parents, Richard and Lizzie, who are in an already precarious marriage and new location due to Richards recent job change. The questions of loyalty, friendship, sexuality, curiosity and parenting skills are all addressed in this come of age novel. The times of cell phones, instant access, constant communication and minimal parent supervision have taken over the world and all the families in it. Interesting story. Captivating writing. A bit of a rush to closure at the end leaves the reader hanging or wanting more. A read that should not be missed.

This Beautiful Life deals with an issue near and dear to a parent's heart - what happens when good kids make bad choices without thinking through the consequences and especially in this day of technology and things going "viral."Unfortunately, the book did not live up to its potential. The book started of with fairly stereotypical images of big city life, New York private schools, and the people the main character viewed as the "rich." In those stereotypes, the message and story of the book were lost. Also, this issue exists at all levels of society and could have been addressed in a way that a wider audience would relate to.This is an important story to tell. I wish I had enjoyed this telling of it.

The reviewer from The Washington Post called the events in this book "a modern day viral nightmare", with the contagion being the internet, no lethal germ. I couldn't agree more. A simple, thoughtless mistake by a shocked 15 year old boy--sharing a mind-blowing,sexually explicit video sent to him by a younger girl from school who had a crush on him with his best friend--started a storm that altered countless lives. The stacked cards on the cover of the book are apt--that one click on "forward" brought the house of cards that the Bergamot family had created for itself crashing down. There was already trouble in the family: hidden resentments, frustrations, lack of communication, etc,; the spotlight of this high school sex scandal shone a very bright beam on all of it and more. This book has a very grim subject, terrifying in how easily it could happen to anyone's family, and offers three very detailed character studies that bring to the forefront the fact that while they are going through this excruciating episode together, they are all very, very much isolated and deeply alone.

I was able to relate to the characters in Helen Schulman's shattering novel, This Beautiful Life. Liz and Richard Bergamot lived in upstate New York, Ithaca, about 30 minutes from where I lived for 45 years. Richard got a fabulous offer for a job in Manhattan, doing work that he found meaningful and rewarding. The family moved to Manhattan.Fours years ago, my husband also received a job offer, doing something meaningful and rewarding, and off we went. Unlike Liz and Richard, our children were grown and off to college, so we did not have to uproot them and raise them in Manhattan.Jake is their 15 year-old-son, who had to leave the suburban beauty of Ithaca and navigate the urban center of Manhattan. Coco, their adopted Chinese daughter, took to Manhattan and all its charms like a duck to water. She was popular with all the "right" girls at school, and got invited to every fancy party.Liz transitioned from working part-time teaching art at the university in Ithaca to being one of the "ladies who lunch". Richard was consumed by his job, and I loved how Liz described him as "exuding competence. He was a self-cleaning oven. And even after all these years, Liz was not immune to the power of his good looks."The description of parenting of these children of privilege hits close to home for many parents today."they are both too close to their children and too far away from the ground. They are too accomplished. They have accumulated too much. They expect too much. They demand too much. They even love their kids too much. This love is crippling in its own way."Jake receives a video from a very young girl he met at a party. It is a pornographic video she made of herself. He doesn't know what to do, and he sends it to his friend to get his opinion. His friend passes it on, and soon it has become viral; the whole world sees it.The life that the Bergamots have is turned upside down. Jake is suspended from his private school, and he may be prosecuted for distributing child pornography. Richard's boss forces him to lay low from his very public position because the story is all over the tabloids and they can't afford the bad publicity.Liz withdraws into her own world, refusing to get out bed most days, glued to her laptop computer. She watches the video of the girl endlessly, and that leads her to other pornography that she can't stop watching.Watching the family fall apart is devastating, and Schulman makes these characters so real that you ache for them. Reading it makes you think "there but for the grace of God and one bad decision go I". As parents we try to teach our children to make good decisions, and we hope that when they eventually do make a bad decision, as they all will, that it is one they can come back from.But in today's plugged-in world, where the click of a mouse can change one's life, making a bad decision can be life-altering. Jake is a good kid, he never would have sent that video out into the world to hurt the young girl, yet that is what happened and it nearly destroys his family.I cried a few times reading this novel, no more so than when Jake tells his dad that he screwed up again, and Richard says, "I'm your father. I'm always on your side." This is a good family, and how they try to live with what happened is something every parent can relate to, although we hope to never be tested as the Bergamots were.This book takes you on an emotional, heart-rending journey, one that will make you think about the fragility of the life you have.

I didn't get what I was expecting from this book but in the end I think Ms. Schulman is a gifted writer/storyteller who crafted a very good story but it was more focuses on the main character and what at times felt like her whining than the story of her son. I just couldn't relate or even like the main character's but I did enjoy some aspects of the story and overall I enjoyed the book.

An ideal family. Lizzie Bergamot is certain that despite her family’s lack of fortune that they’ve got it all and it’s only getting better by the minute. The Bergamot’s recent move to the big city was the result of a very lucrative job offer for her husband and it’s side effects could be seen everywhere. From the overnight Mommy-Daughter spa-esque treatments at the Plaza Hotel to the very prestigious schools for both of her children, Coco and Jake. It also meant new territory and potential hazards no one in the family had encountered before, but Lizzie never expected those hazards to be played out inside the walls of her own home. Least of all in the bedroom of her teenage son Jake. Suddenly the walls of their perfect life come crumbling down and the entire family is left with scars that may never heal.This is by far one of my greatest fears. My son or daughter doing something so damaging that it alters their entire life just by clicking the mouse. People do things on the internet everyday that they’d never admit to, things they’d never do in a public place and unfortunately children & teenagers especially are even more prone to push the limits. It’s even more tantalizing to when it’s uncharted territory that can be incredibly intriguing to a curious and often naive young person. Unfortunately all it takes is one click, one photo or video forwarded to a friend, and suddenly your world is turned on it’s head.That’s exactly what happened to Jake Bergamot when he received a video from a thirteen year old girl he knew from school. Once he’d forwarded it to a friend moments after receiving it the domino effect began and the lives of everyone involved were changed forever. Everyone from the girl who sent it, Daisy, to his little sister Coco, who wasn’t old enough to understand the video she accidentally discovered on her mother’s computer. I’m positive I’m not alone in my concern over this matter. Any parent I know who has children growing up today is aware of the risks surrounding computer use by the children in our lives. What was interesting about This Beautiful Life was reading how the situation played out and the ripple affect it had on nearly everyone in the book. It nearly destroys their family and in many ways that was hard to read, but it certainly gave me a greater understanding about what to do and not do in this particular circumstance; I only hope I never have to deal with it.Overall I felt like This Beautiful Life was very well written and the opportunity to be a “fly on the wall” so to speak was an invaluable lesson. There were times during my reading though that I felt dragged a bit. Helen Schulman does explain in an interview with Brian Gesko of The Paris Review Daily that, “My characters are human, warts and all…”. Well, in many cases I felt like I simply didn’t need to know the every minute detail of her character’s lives. Yes, those things make them real, but in some cases it definitely slowed my reading. That being said, I still absolutely enjoyed the story overall and I’d be open to reading more by Schulman in the future.This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman is the telling of a tragic situation that hopefully many families will be able to avoid in our technology laden world. As a parent it can be difficult to balance the need children growing up today have to be connected technologically speaking with the potential for danger that lurks a few mouse clicks away. In the case of Lizzie Bergamot and her son Jake there were so many things I would have done differently, but as a parent I also know that you simply do the very best you can and hope your children make the right choices. This Beautiful Life was an eye opening read that I think parents everywhere could benefit from reading and one I’d definitely recommend.Originally reviewed and copyrighted at my site There's A Book.

Picked up this book from the library about 10 minutes before I discovered a similar "scandal" was unfolding at our High School! How timely and topical!

The author brings the reader into the family of a teenage boy who receives, unsolicited, a sexting video from a grade 8 girl. What happens next, and how it impacts the boy, his parents, and their lives unfolds quickly, and rather unevenly.

I found the author spent too much time with the mother/adopted daughter and the husband and his business mission during their day leading up to the incident. It just dragged on and was not really relevant to the story. It felt like the author was trying to pull in some other social issues she wanted to address, fleshing out the novel in a way that was not needed. A side story about the mom's obsession with an ex-boyfriend's blog went nowhere and rang false. The story also gave short-shrift to the young girl's side of the story, jumping forward to her at the end in a very unsatisfying way. That said, it is a very thought-provoking subject, and I am looking forward to our book-club discussion!

This story really shows what can happen in this time of the internet. Nothing is safe as it can be sent electronically. once you hit the send button it is out of your control and the kids now don't realize that. They just put everything out there on the internet. This book is a reminder you need to stop and think before you hit the send button.

Once, the Bergamots were the darlings of the Manhattan jet set. Transplanted there by virtue of a job offer Richard Bergamot could not refuse, they packed up and left their happy, small town, suburban lifestyle for the fast pace of the city and a future of financial triumphs. Richard loved his new job. Liz loved her new found lifestyle of the “rich and famous”. She gave up her ambitions in favor of her husband’s achievements. Both have Ph.D’s. Both appear to be interested first, in the world of Botox and vacations, rather than their children. They live in Charles Murray’s bubble world of the established, mixing primarily with their own kind and moving in their own circle of comfort and prosperity.Regarding the move, there is no evidence that the needs, or effect of the move on the children, were given much consideration. This move would provide them all with many creature comforts and advantages which would make the move worthwhile. The subtle side effects of this move on their behavior, after being uprooted and placed in a cauldron of anonymity, so different from the warmth and community of their old neighborhood is largely ignored. Everyone is too busy enjoying the affluence.The Bergamots are currently living in a temporary apartment provided by the University that hired Richard, until the school’s new upscale residences are completed. Richard is senior executive vice chancellor of the Astor University of the City of New York. Richard’s ambition is to take a blighted area and turn it into a state of the art campus for the university, creating jobs and affordable housing at the same time. This sounds noble until you find out that Richard has helped the neighborhood become more blighted by buying the parking lot that used to service the area, refusing to renew leases among other things, thereby insuring its decline in order to help guarantee the project’s approval.One evening, Liz takes Coco, their adopted Chinese daughter, to a clandestine, child’s birthday party, at the Plaza Hotel, where the mothers proceed to drink themselves into a stupor, and Coco proceeds to bounce from bed to bed for most of the night. Liz returns home exhausted and with a hangover. She neither notices the discomfort of her son Jake, from his previous night out, nor is she in any condition to help him even if she had acknowledged it. The book is a study in parents who, from the outside, appear to hover around their children, and yet, in reality, they neglect to pay much attention to the more salient aspects of parenting, like the teaching of values and ethics. Children learn from the example and often, perhaps unwittingly, the parental example is often shallow and mercenary because the parents are unaware of how closely they are being watched.By and large, Richard is too busy climbing, placing one hand over the other on the ladder of success, and Liz is too busy trying to fit in and be cool, like the other mothers, enjoying the high life, going to the best restaurants, the newest shows, enjoying the latest fashions, to realize when things subtly start to go awry. The lifestyle they enjoy seems extremely superficial. However, the children are provided with every advantage, even if they are somewhat neglected when it comes to moral development, and the finer nuances of their occasional behavioral aberrations, which gave evidence to their somewhat troubled adjustment, often went unnoticed. Coco, only 6 years old, is a typically, if not also overactive, mischievous young child. Jake is 15, and a victim of his puberty and his hormones, which when coupled with the change in his environment, confuse him and offer him no ideal opportunities for explanations or means to address his concerns. The friends he has chosen appear to be very different from the boy Jake used to be, a boy who would prefer to be back in his old neighborhood, riding his bike and experiencing the wind blowing through his hair as he rode downhill with his eyes closed, rather than standing on a corner smoking weed and drinking beer, illegally. He is essentially a good boy, a naïve young man, trying to make his way in the world of the teenager, fraught with all the dangers that face them, chief among them being the internet and the lack of restraint often exhibited by kids because they simply don’t know better.On the evening that his dad works late and his mom parties, Jake also looks for entertainment. He is being trusted to travel on his own and come home on his own since the parents are otherwise going to be occupied. When the party he intended to attend with his friends is canceled, he crashes another, and after the experience there, his world, forever after, is changed. He meets Daisy there and they sort of hook up. He rejects her, in the end, and in the morning he receives a very lewd, sexually explicit video from her. Instead of deleting it, in his shock and with immature naïveté and confusion, he foolishly forwards it to a friend, hoping for some input. He has no one to go to for guidance, unfortunately, or this would not have happened. Of course, the video goes viral, and it is the beginning of the end for Jake, his family, some of his friends, and most of all, for Daisy.How will this tragedy be resolved? Where do you place the blame? Is it Daisy’s fault since she, with premeditation, sent the video which has now been classified as pornography? Is it Jake’s, although he never asked for it and was shocked by it, because he sent it onward? The repercussions are monumental. Liz falls into an emotional decline. Richard loses his position and has to take a forced leave. Jake is suspended. Daisy is shamed but signing autographs. She has become famous. Jake is somewhere between a murderer and a martyr on the scale of guilt. Is this tragedy the fault of society, parenting, affluence, arrogance? Will the victims learn from this experience or continue to make the same mistakes, pursuing the wrong, often selfish goals?This is not a wonderful piece of literature but this book will give rise to many discussions on cyber-bullying, arrogance, the internet, political correctness, diversity, “blending” of cultures, class advantages or disadvantages, the lack of rules and proper discipline in modern homes, the effects of neglect and lack of parental involvement, the dangers wrought by too much money and the dangers wrought by the lack of it.I would give this novel three stars except for the fact that I think it is more important as a tool for discussion than for scholarship, so it warrants four. If it leads to meaningful conversation and solutions, to current parenting issues and juvenile behavior or lack thereof, with or without the involvement of cyberspace, it will be more worthwhile than its value as literature.

This Beautiful Life is both strikingly of the moment and just a bit behind the times. Its events take place in 2003, a time when many of us were starting to live online, but when the most common way to share over the internet was still via e-mail. A story in which the catalyst is a video that goes viral might play out a bit differently now, in the YouTube/Facebook era. Having said that, while the details place the novel in a very specific time and place, Helen Schulman has crafted a timeless, resonant story that dissects choices and their consequences, looking at one family’s “beautiful life” at the instant it’s on the verge of shattering.Both Richard and Liz Bergamot have been strivers - Richard is the first in his family to graduate high school, let alone college and beyond, while Liz grew up in a single-parent home in the North Bronx. Together since graduate school, they have made choices in their marriage that define their roles and spheres within it. When Richard accepts a job leading the expansion of a major Manhattan university, that choice moves the family from small, bohemian-flavored Ithaca, New York to the Upper West Side and effectively back-burners Liz’s career for the duration. Spaces are made for their children, Jake and Coco, at an elite private school. It’s a new world for them all, and just as they’re finding their way, it’s all blown apart by a 13-year-old girl’s bad choice to make an explicit video and e-mail it to a 15-year-old; the 15-year-old’s bad choice to forward the e-mail; and the parents’ difficult choices about how to handle the fallout.While the novel is primarily event-driven, the hook resides in how the primary characters react to the events, and Schulman reveals this though the alternating perspectives of Liz, Jake, and Richard. It’s interesting to view these characters though one another’s eyes, and the author succeeded in making me feel sympathetic toward all of them; there are really neither heroes nor villains here, and the emotional charge and challenge of their situation feels authentic.Another hook for me was Schulman’s use of specific place references that I knew personally. I was part of the Cornell University community in Ithaca (as a grad-student spouse) for several years, and I recognized places that came up in Liz’s reflections on the family’s life there, but Ithaca’s appearances in fiction don’t really take me by surprise any more. I was surprised that Liz grew up in that “middle-class housing project” in the Bronx, Co-op City, however; my great-aunts lived there, and frequent visits made it part of the landscape of my childhood. I don’t see it show up often in my reading, though.This Beautiful Life got its hooks into me immediately, and I think it will stay with me for awhile - there’s a lot to think about, and talk about, here.

I kept waiting and waiting for “This Beautiful Life” to reach its peak. The story hinges on an event that is described within the first few pages of the book and there is very little suspense after that.The family – Richard, Liz, Jake & Coco – described in this book just don’t seem to react too much. Jake, after forwarding a pornographic video, is suspended from school. He stays home during his suspension along with his stay at home mother and his father, taking “family time”. They hardly seem to speak of the incident, neither parent seems want to deal with the event & the consequences, and they seem to just be in a holding pattern for most of the book.Liz, more than anyone, seems bogged down by everything both in and missing from her life. “It was heaven really to be alone in that cramped apartment. And yet, as she had felt almost every day since they’d moved in, when she came back from dropping Coco off at school, or yoga, or errands, or coffee, Liz took one look at her messy home and was overwhelmed by how much there was to do and how little she wanted to do it. Finding that first step into an amorphous day, a day without bones, was always the hardest.”I do like that phrase, though – “a day without bones”.Underneath the uncertain lethargy of most of the characters, there is a message about way the role of parents has changed in this modern world. “(Richard’s dad)…didn’t focus on him, he didn’t coddle him, he didn’t help him with his homework or take his emotional temperature three times a day or do any of the things Richard and Lizzie do now, along with eating and breathing, as a way of life. Dad loved his boys within reason. Dad’s was a reasonable, conditional love, the condition being that Richard kept his nose clean, that he always did his best, that he conducted himself with honor.”But in general, the story just kind of meanders along, until finally, just near the end, something happens that slaps the family in the face and wakes them from their stupor.I suppose what kept me at a distance in this book was description of the emotions the characters were feeling…we were told they felt things…but those feelings stayed firmly on the page & didn’t spark any reaction on my part.It seems as if the story of “This Beautiful Life” was almost over before it began.

The cover gives the story away. Upper middle- class family moves from Ithaca to New York where 16 year old son and 6 year old adopted daughter (from China) attend elite private schools. The move is due to Dad’s new job at a New York University. Although she has a Ph.D, Mom doesn’t have to work because Dad makes a huge salary. A beautiful life, right? Well more like an easy life.Relationships unravel when school notifies Mom and Dad that son Jake has forwarded a pornographic video made for him by a 13 year old girl (yikes!). To be fair, there is no malicious intent on Jake’s part. He’s just stupid! The video goes viral.Of course the house of cards collapses: Mom gets stoned and watches pornography on her laptop; Dad is offered a leave of absence from the university until things calm down; Jake gets suspended before his university qualifying exams and little Coco is caught imitating the 13 year old’s sex video for her friends. The fact that Mom actually lets Coco “play” on a laptop loaded with pornographic images is glossed over.Things are resolved in a fairly realistic way, no Hallmark ending.Ms Schulman presents some interesting and scary aspects of internet law and teens: culpability, forwarding images/info, confidentiality etc. Dad’s surprising sympathy towards the 13 year old crush was a tender moment. Apart from the Dad—I feel he gets the short end of the stick—I couldn’t sympathize with any of the characters. Indulged and self-indulgent, they slide into trouble with little resistance.