Reading Jonathan Dee's newest novel "The Privileges" (2010) feels like biting into really expensive, decadent chocolate. Like candy, his writing is addicting, deliciously sweet at times and bitingly tart at others. But beyond its compulsive readability, "The Privileges" is intelligent, substantial and worthwhile, as it questions our society's definition of success in a subtle but chilling way.
At first glance, "The Privileges" seems like your typical wannabe-bestseller about filthy rich people living in New York City. Beginning with Adam and Cynthia's wedding, the novel cycles through their children's childhood, adolescence and adulthood while chronicling the family's accumulation of wealth. Dee makes a point to emphasize just how incredibly "successful" they are they have money, looks, brains and they donate loads of money to charity. The underlying question of the novel, though, persists how happy are they, really?
Adam, who "creates wealth where there was no wealth before, and did it well enough that there was no end to it," moves with Cynthia to downtown New York shortly after they marry. They make no effort, however, to maintain relationships with their family or old friends. Cynthia and Adam have their own kids, April and Jonas, and decide that their family of four is a perfectly sufficient amount of family for them. They fail to visit Cynthia's dying stepfather, and Cynthia almost refuses to pick up her stepsister from a mental institution, telling her mother derisively, "Don't hand me that family shit."
The characters in the novel seem to think they are happy, likely because they believe so strongly that they should be. The kids go to one of the most exclusive private schools in Manhattan, they are all ridiculously good-looking and they generally get along as a family. Yet no family member is immune to the sinking feelings that lead them to question, at least once in the course of the novel, just how happy they really are. Jonas rejects his family's jet-setting lifestyle altogether. April, the precocious adolescent who grows up to be a coked-out socialite, complains to her parents after a particularly dangerous weekend of antics, "Another few days and I'll be hanging out with the same people doing the same stupid shit even though I don't really want to. Why is that? I mean, what am I supposed to do with all my time?"
Dee tells April what to do, implicitly throughout the novel what's missing in this family's life, clearly, is their other family, and some real, meaningful work. "The Privileges" is a story about the changing definitions of success in American society, a topic that is especially salient given the recent recession and growing tension between Wall Street and middle America. The American Dream was built on manual labor jobs that made you sweat and created real, tangible goods. Now, people like Adam create wealth out of nothing. And in "The Privileges," Dee shows us the tenuous lives that result from a world based on ephemeral wealth.
