The fractured lives of four adult siblings—all of whom can’t face each other without a clandestine drink first—take center stage in The Nest, a thoroughly engaging debut novel from Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney.
The youngest Plumb siblings—Beatrice, Jack and Melody—find their dreams of claiming a large inheritance torn away to pay for the mistakes of the eldest, Leo. A serial womanizer, Leo crashed his Porsche while driving (an abundance of cocaine and martinis in his blood) with a 19-year-old waitress, who ultimately lost a foot in the collision. Paying the waitress off depleted nearly the entire fund, to the horror of Leo’s siblings.
The remarkably self-absorbed Leo was born with a charisma strong enough to exceed his failures, but at this stage of midlife he’s nearly depleted that well, facing his siblings with smiles and promising words they know to be fake. Asking for trust while concealing everything, Leo buys just enough time to fall back into the arms of his longtime on-again-off-again lover Stephanie.
The central paradox of The Nest is centered on a trust fund that the stock market inflated far beyond their late father’s expectations. What was intended to be a little mid-life boost became, in each sibling’s eyes, the answer to all the problems they face, financial or otherwise. Sweeney lifts back the veil in successive chapters to show how longing, for each main character, is ultimately for more than money.
Sweeney leaves it to one of the novel’s more sensible characters—Jack Plumb’s husband, Walker—to quietly observe what the Plumbs could never see: “money—and the entitlement that often accompanied just the idea of money—could warp relationships and memories and decisions.”
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