Well, this was kind of a slog to get through it. The writing seems like random thoughts more than anything else. It does get a bit better, but unfortunately, not by much. The description seemed awesome; this could have been so much more.. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

As a gal from Long Island herself who left when I was a teenager, I love reading books about my birthplace. This book didn't let me down. I've spent a lot of time in D.C. and can understand why people would need a break. Ambition, the hardness of the area can make you get caught up and forget what is important. Only by slowing down does someone see the realities of what their lives really consist of and what needs to change. A Long Island Story is this book.

As a mother, a wife of a non-politician who works in politics I really identified with Addie without the negativity. Mother's lose themselves if they aren't careful we get sucked into the identities of the people we are raising, the person we are married to that we forget to take care of ourselves and sometimes become lost and more selfish that we should be. That selfishness comes out by nitpicking, trying to get people to do things the way you think they out to do things and that negativity can kill a relationship that might have been thriving beforehand.

Rick Gekoski covers a deep and diverse area of marriage and takes you into the underbelly of how people relate to each other. I didn't read his debut novel Darke however I might be doing so now.

A Long Island Story was well written with its lyrical styling. Some of the sentences were so musical that sometimes painted a picture that you could not help but forget the tragicness of the whole family dynamic.

My only critic would be that sometimes the characters felt as if they weren't fleshed out enough. Sometimes I wanted more from them and for them. Maybe that is just how the book should be though.

Thanks, NetGalley, Rick Gekoski and Cannongate Books for allowing me to read A Long Island Story in lieu of my honest review.

Very disappointing. I know for sure that Rick Gekoski can do better than this. The story and writing was very confusing. I DNF this book.

I just couldnt with this book. The characters seemed under developed. The plot just wasn't moving along. So many times I wanted to put this down and say forget it. I felt this book could have really been more, especially having been written by Rick Gekoski, but it fell flat.

I really wanted to like this book - a lot. Being from NY I tend to gravitate toward stories that are written with it as the backdrop. I found the story lacking and a little bit clumsy. It seemed like there was no real thought given to the plot or the characters. It was highly disappointing.

I loved Gekoski's previous novel DARKE and so I was really looking forward to A LONG ISLAND STORY. Unfortunately, Gekoski did not bring the emotional depth to the characters that made DARKE such an amazing read. The characters inhabiting A LONG ISLAND STORY were not particularly likeable or interesting and in my opinion, you have to have one of the two to make a book worth reading. Just didn't hold my interest the way I thought it would. That said, Gekoski's language and description are lovely, just not enough to carry the book.

I never DNF books so I really tried to keep going with this but it felt like I was constantly waiting for it to pick up. There's no depth to the characters, barely any plot and no real analysis or interaction with the McCarthy era which is one of the main marketing points of the book. It genuinely just seemed like a 320 page description of a blip in someone's marriage before everything goes back to normal. Wasn't for me, sorry!

A promising setting led to a disappointing read

I was very interested in the time and place of this book. The McCarthy era haunted my generation, and I looked forward to reading more about this period. As I began to read, though, I was disappointed not to get more of that background. Instead, this is the story of a failing marriage. Although I felt sorry for Addie, I got tired of her whining, and the more I read, the less I liked her.

The characters were very well-formed, and I agree with others who have suggested this might have worked better as a full out autobiography.

The description of this book: "It is 1953, a heat wave is sweeping across America and the Grossmans - Ben, Addie and their two children - are moving their lives from the political heart of Washington DC to suburban Long Island. Benny was a successful lawyer in the Department of Justice, but all that has come tumbling down. With the McCarthy era of paranoia, persecution, and propaganda at its height, his past has come back to haunt him, forcing him to pack up his family and leave the capital behind.

With their future uncertain, life in Long Island starts to open old wounds for Ben and Addie, both start to wonder if they were meant for more, whether their future might look different than they planned, and whether their marriage - their family - is worth fighting for . . .

A Long Island Story is a portrait of a marriage in crisis, of a unique and fascinating period in US history and of a seemingly perfect family fighting their demons behind closed doors."

This was not a good representation of the book. I was looking forward to reading about the impact of McCarthyism on this family, but it was hardly mentioned, despite being in the description of the book! This one was disappointing for me.

Very disappointing. I know for sure that Rick Gekoski can do better than this. It’s such a banal novel I could hardly wade through it. Very much ado about nothing, I’m afraid. It tells of Ben, Addie and their two children who are planning a move from DC to suburban Long Island after Ben, a successful lawyer, gets caught up in the McCarthy red scare. This unwanted move exposes fissures in their relationship and the long hot summer of 1953 begins to take its toll on all of them. Now if you’re going to write about a family going through some shaky times, you have to make them interesting, you’ve got to add something new to the conversation. Gekoski doesn’t. Same old same old. He doesn’t even explore the McCarthy aspect in any detail, which would perhaps have created more interest, but just kind of throws it into the mix as a plot device. The characterisation is superficial and the dialogue unnatural. All told, an unoriginal and very ordinary novel which is already fading from my memory.

A Long Island Story was the perfect book for this heat wave the UK is having. An atmospheric setting, with eloquent writing and a plot with a punch. A very enjoyable read by Gekoski.

A Long Island Story by Rick Gekoski

Set in 1953 this book is about a family moving from Washington DC to Long Island. It is not a move any of them really wish to be making, but with the political era of that time, they have to leave.
This isn’t a book where ‘something happens ‘, there is no mystery to solve, or bad guy to track down, it is a story of a snapshot of a turbulent time in a families life. It is about about a fragile marriage, a couple returning home to where they used to live, thinking their life should be more than what it is. But knowing it is only them that can make it so.
The skill of the writing made this book for me.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Published by Canongate Books on July 3, 2018

Rick Gekoski's first novel, Darke, was published when Gekoski was 72 years old, which makes me think there is hope for me yet. A Long Island Story is his second novel.

Is it bad to give up a dream? Or can giving up a dream be an important step toward getting on with life? That’s one of the central questions the reader of A Long Island Story is invited to ponder.

Ben Grossman works for the Department of Justice during the dark days of McCarthy, barely hanging onto his job but living in fear that, like so many of his innocent colleagues, he will be denounced as a Communist. Ben and Addie live in Alexandria and are raising their two children to respect the struggle for civil rights. Their liberal political views make it only a matter of time before Ben is purged from an intolerant government.

Ben and Addie generally agree on political goals, if not strategies, but passion has bled from their marriage. Addie and the kids are spending a seven-week summer vacation with Addie’s parents, Maurice and Pearl, at their Long Island bungalow. Addie’s brother Frankie and Frank’s wife Michelle join them, as does Ben briefly, during his vacation from work. But the stay with Addie’s parents is prefatory to a move to Long Island that Addie dreads: public schools for the kids, a suburban apartment instead of a home in Virginia’s farmlands. Ben plans to open a law practice in Huntington, a stifling place for women. Addie can barely tolerate Long Island for the summer and has no desire to return to the childhood home from which she escaped. The stress is one of many forces that might tear their marriage apart.

Also having an impact on their marriage is the affair Ben is having with a wealthy woman who wants to support him while he pursues his dream of being a writer. Addie is about as unsupportive as a wife could be, choosing her family’s lifestyle over her husband’s happiness. She thinks it is bad enough that he wants to abandon his job before being fired; she views his desire to write, even in his free time, as frivolous and regressive. Ben and Addie spend much of the novel competing to see who can be more selfish, leading to novel’s most confrontational (and strongest) moment.

Maurice has his own problems, giving rise to a subplot that relates to a side business he operates — a legitimate business, but one that leaves him indebted to an Italian with mob connections. Ben and Addie’s children have their own anxieties, the uncertainties and fears that children have when parents aren’t getting along.

Some of the story is taken up by kids building forts and letting the day drift by, which might be a nice way to spend time but dull to read about. More interesting are the typical fears that parents experience: the brief disappearance of a child, the polio epidemic, whether to risk taking the children to a polluted but convenient beach.

Characters are assembled in detail, perhaps excessive detail, not all of it terribly interesting. It is good to know about the family history and the longings and failings and triumphs that shaped their personalities, but their individual reactions to the latest hit song and their meal preferences and the inevitable fights and illnesses among the children who crowd into the back of a car are less enlightening.

The setting is also carefully rendered. Ben’s job sends him to the South and Midwest, where he makes legal arguments in support of rural electrification to local judges who (as Ben imagines it) are put off by the eloquent “Yankee Jewboy bigshot who thought he could hornswoggle a bunch of rednecks.” The country has readily swallowed McCarthyism because the American public “has an insatiable need for someone to blame.” How little the country has changed.

While A Long Island Story did not consistently hold my interest, the novel’s best moments are compelling. The main story could have resolved in many different ways, but Gekoski bucks the modern trend of leaving stories unfinished. Given that the story is set in 1953, following the conventions of less modern novels seems appropriate, but the ending benefits from a modernist realism, shedding light on what a conventional ending to a 1950s story really means. If I didn’t like A Long Island Story as much as I liked Darke, the honesty with which the characters are rendered, the subtlety of the ending, and the theme of pursuing or abandoning dreams combine to earn A Long Island Story an easy recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

A failing marriage in the 1950s on Long Island. Hmm. I was drawn in by the promise of the impact of McCarthyism but that's not what this is about. I found it hard to relate to either Ben or Addie and while I was sympathetic to the kids who found themselves moved and dealing with unhappy parents, the novel didn't grab me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

An extended family deals with changes in McCarthy era America. Partially autobiographical the story is a little light on depth. #netgalley #longislandstory

The Grossmans are "an archetypal leftist family." Ben Grossman's socialist politics becomes a liability in 1953 when Senator McCarthy is targeting 'communist sympathizers.' It was time for him to leave his job in the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Ben had dreamed of being a writer, but with a wife and children to support, his option is to pass the New York State bar and open a law practice. Long Island, NY is burgeoning with post-war housing in suburban communities, the perfect place to start his practice.

His wife, Addie, however, longs for the excitement of the city. She gave up enough for her marriage and hardly remembers who she was. She never bargained for the sterility and conformity of the suburban desert. Ben and Addie's marriage has been coming apart for a long time, and this decision is one more indication of the disintegration.

Ben and Addie and the kids move in with Ben's folks while they find housing. Ben's dad tells his grandkids stories of the Cossacks driving his family to find shelter in America. To make ends met, he built a business selling knock-off fashion apparel. Facing heart problems, he wants out, but it comes at a price.

A Long Island Story is a study of a family in crisis, caught in a time when people's "insatiable need for someone to blame" and have a craving for "something to fear and a leader to protect them from it." Addie thinks, "The next thing you knew one of them would be in the White House, as good old H. L. Mencken had predicted thirty years ago: a moron."

Ben must decide on what he really values. Addie must decide what she is willing to give up. And their children must learn to walk the narrow line between personal values and societal demands.

Author Rick Gekoski was inspired by his own family story, based on his childhood memories, liberally fictionalized.

I enjoyed the detailed description of the time, but this is not historical fiction as much as the story of a marriage. The novel is character-driven with psychological insight.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This novel was a bit of a miss for me. I enjoyed the setting of Long Island during the McCarthy era and found the premise interesting. But, being a more character driven rather than plot driven novel, I needed more from these characters. In the end, the setting was the best part.

The writing style was truly poor--it struck me as way too much of the characters' neurotic thinking spelled out and way too little subtle character development.

After a consistent streak of speculative fiction I was ready for some proper literature and this did the trick. A methodically plotted and meticulously executed story of a struggling marriage set in the summer of 1953 against the backdrop of McCarthy’s witch trials…this novel turned out to be a fictionalized autobiographical account of the author’s childhood, something the readers don’t get to find out until the afterword. So the author’s fictionalized counterpart is Jake, a precocious 10 year old, but the novel isn’t told from his perspective, it’s very much an adult world with adult crises, the main one of which seems to be the reconciliation of what dreams and reality, the what might have beens against what is, even city against suburb works here as a metaphor for reluctantly accepting life’s currents. This is a very quiet sort of story, not much action of any sort, purely character driven work, but as such it’s very well done and even when the characters aren’t immediately or easily likeable they are compelling in their struggles and battles. Representationally the book does a terrific job of recreating a place in time and presenting fraught family dynamics that are essentially placeless and timeless. Nevertheless, because it’s such an internal sort of narrative, it makes for quite heavy reading and you should really be in the mood for it, otherwise it may end up seeming as plodding and tedious as the actual Long Island. I found myself enjoying this book, it was psychologically well observed and emotionally intelligent and suited the mood for a slow afternoon read. Thanks Netgalley.