Wise Men
By Stuart Nadler
335 pages;
Regan Arthur
In 1950, Hilly Wise is an everyday teenager
living in working-class New Haven, Connecticut. By 1951, after his father's
first big victory as a plaintiff attorney, he is the son of a
multi-millionaire. His family moves to the upscale suburban village of Wren's
Bridge (where "we were, I'm sure of it, the first family of Jews on our
street") and then to Cape Cod for the summer. While at the family's new
oceanfront home, this introspective young man reels with the surprising and
often ugly consequences of almost unimaginable wealth. His mother loads up on
crystal and cashmere, while his father descends into drunken binges, directing his
rage at Lem, the black caretaker who lives above the garage. When Hilly
develops a crush on the Lem's niece—an attachment discouraged by
everyone involved—he makes a rash choice that changes all their lives
and not for the better. Much of this complex and honest novel is about the
possibility of redemption for our past actions. But the emotionally searing
sections revolve around Hilly's ambitious, tyrannical father, who is endowed
with a mixture of such uplifting and upsetting qualities that you're constantly
sifting through secrets and motivations, trying to understand him—and
getting sucked into the story in the process. The novel does slow in the latter
half, but hold on. The last 10 pages turn the whole story on its head and makes
such sense, you may just gasp and say,
"But of course! Except...how did I not see that?" Which is one of those
pleasures a very fine novel can provide, to best us and yet make us feel all
the more satisfied the experience.
— Leigh Newman