{"id":6006,"date":"2015-06-04T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6006"},"modified":"2015-06-08T11:27:37","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T11:27:37","slug":"the-unfortunates-by-sophie-mcmanus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6006","title":{"rendered":"The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Hutchinson UK, Farrar Straus & Giroux US, June 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

White mansion, green lawn, blue sea \u2013 in Sophie McManus\u2019s elegant debut this vision of privilege translates, enjoyably, to elephant-hide snobbery and recurrent misery; a classic \u2018rich are different\u2019 scenario.<\/p>\n

The house is Booth Hill, the Stockport, Connecticut home of CeCe (Cecilia) Somner, heir to a rubber fortune, and the novel offers a devastating portrait of the Somners, mainly now but also then, during the rapacious accumulation of their fortune. Several generations of difficult, even cruel marriages have come at last to this: elderly CeCe and her two emotionally-scarred children: Patricia, a lesbian living with her partner on the far Western coast of the US, and ne\u2019er-do-well George. White-glove matriarch CeCe, savagely withering in her criticism despite exquisite old-guard manners, still rules the roost, but for how much longer?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The time span is one busy year during which CeCe\u2019s declining health is treated by an extensive drug trial at a private hospital \u2013 just long enough for George to go comprehensively off the rails. A man with a long, hidden history of unpleasantness, mental instability and failure, George has a new, white-trash-ish wife, Iris, and a sinecure job at a grant-dispensing outfit. But George also has a secret. He has composed a ridiculous opera, The Burning Papers<\/em>, and intends to see it grace a New York stage. Launching a production of this footling musical catastrophe will pull down all the structures pinning him to the ground.<\/p>\n

Neither epic nor wildly original, McManus\u2019s debut nevertheless handles its divergent psychologies and trajectories with finesse, wit and a delicious line in stiletto put-downs. Some will find this story of unpleasant rich folk who never quite receive their come-uppances predictable and a tad unsympathetic. For them, there\u2019s the ordinariness of Iris, pulled into the unwholesome household through a combination of sincerity and naivety, and struggling to find her feet.<\/p>\n

True, none of the characters nor their plights earns the reader\u2019s whole-hearted sympathy, but the schadenfreude of observing them – each an Unfortunate in his or her own way – delivered via McManus\u2019s thoughtful, amusing prose, is enough to qualify the book as a superior summer read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

The time span is one busy year during which CeCe\u2019s declining health is treated by an extensive drug trial at a private hospital \u2013 just long enough for George to go comprehensively off the rails. A man with a long, hidden history of unpleasantness, mental instability and failure, George has a new, white-trash-ish wife, Iris, and a sinecure job at a grant-dispensing outfit. But George also has a secret. He has composed a ridiculous opera,The Burning Papers<\/em>, and intends to see it grace a New York stage. Launching a production of this footling musical catastrophe will pull down all the structures pinning him to the ground […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6006"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6016,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6006\/revisions\/6016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}