The Latecomer

You think your family has issues?

Jean Hanff Korelitz’s writing is like a sleek bullet train, propelled forward, subtlety gaining speed and momentum until reaching its destination. This is the third book of hers I’ve read and in my review of The Plot I wrote “Korelitz is an excellent writer; her books just seem to roll out before the reader, with thoughts, asides, passages, and ruminations all beautifully weaved into the action…Read this book for the story and for her prose, which is beautiful and insightful.”

I guess you can say I’m a fan.

The Latecomer is the epic tale of the Oppenheimer clan, circa the 1970s to present. No, not those Oppenheimers. This family has Jewish roots they can trace back hundreds of years. They are wealthy and in the business of managing the family wealth and the family art.

This novel is so rich and dense with layers and connections that I’m finding it difficult to come up with a succinct and coherent summary. There’s so much story that I had to check the book flap to see what is revealed, what’s safe to tell you.

In a way, this is an Art book. As in the power of art, the meaning of art, the art world, and who gets to call themselves an artist. Despite growing up with Old Masters in his home, Salo isn’t into art at all until he takes a solo summer trip to Europe and finds himself dumbstruck, dizzy and enraptured by a Cy Twombly work (“Untitled”).

He thought: Is this really art?

He thought: Why does it help?

He thought: Who gets to look at this?

Salo eventually builds a world-class collection based solely on what he is drawn to. Art does help him with the guilt and trauma he carries from a teenage accident. But it’s an escape as well – just ask his wife and kids.

Johanna is his wife, mother to their three children, the triplets Harrison, Lewyn and Sally. The couple had a hard time starting their family and as the cover of the book reveals, the triplets got some help from science and a celebrated IVF doctor. Johanna did her best to orchestrate an idyllic family life but the children would not, could not do it.

The triplets wanted absolutely nothing to do with each other. Of course, they played along when necessary, participated in annual family traditions, but other than that it was complete indifference and avoidance.

The Latecomer is built on chapters with alternating voices and the chapters have titles and subtitles, which I love. For example, “Chapter Seven: Warrior Girls; In which Sally Oppenheimer learns something new.”

Phoebe is the latecomer, the fourth test-tube baby, frozen in time until making her entrance while the triplets are in college (Sally and Lewyn at Cornell together but still avoiding each other and Harrison at Roarke, an all-male two-year school where he can finally be an intellectual among intellectuals.) Phoebe’s the most perceptive of the bunch and if anyone can bring this fractured family together it’s going to be her.

I haven’t even mentioned Stella and Ephraim, or Eli and Rochelle. Their lives are weaved into the Oppenheimer’s by chance and by fate. Korelitz is an expert weaver and twister of plots. This book has a jaw dropping moment – I never saw it coming. I put the book down for a while at the end of that chapter to enjoy the anticipation of what was going to come next.

This is a novel about finding yourself; who you love, what you believe and how you fit in. It’s supremely entertaining, a total pleasure to read, and I hope you indulge yourself in it.

Want more Korelitz?

The Plot https://bookthrasher.com/2022/04/08/well-plotted/

You Should Have Known https://bookthrasher.com/2021/07/01/shouldve-known-better/