Five years after her wild­ly suc­cess­ful debut, Fleish­man Is in Trou­ble, Taffy Brodess­er-Akn­er returns with an engross­ing new nov­el, Long Island Com­pro­mise. The book opens in 1980, when, thanks to the suc­cess of their poly­styrene molds fac­to­ry, the Fletch­ers lead a priv­i­leged life on Long Island. But after the head of the house­hold, Carl, is kid­napped and held hostage for five days, no one in his fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty is the same. Carl’s three adult chil­dren — Nathan, Beam­er, and Jen­ny — all deal with PTSD in dif­fer­ent ways, and Carl’s moth­er and wife attempt to shield him from any fur­ther dif­fi­cul­ties. While their inten­tions are good, the out­comes of their actions are unex­pect­ed and ever­last­ing. Long Island Com­pro­mise is about how one person’s actions can impact their fam­i­ly, and how their lega­cy — well deserved or not — will shape future generations. 

With humor and human­i­ty, Akn­er dis­cuss­es how her career as a jour­nal­ist helps her to craft indeli­ble char­ac­ters, the ways in which the specifics of Judaism can res­onate with wide audi­ences, and the best actor to star as Mandy Patinkin in the TV adap­ta­tion of her new nov­el (Mandy Patinkin). 

Evie Saphire-Bern­stein: I read in an inter­view you did with The Book­seller that you start­ed writ­ing Long Island Com­pro­mise before you wrote your debut nov­el, and then put it on pause to fin­ish Fleish­man first. Could you tell me more about that process, and what inspired you to write Long Island Com­pro­mise?

Taffy Brodess­er-Akn­er: Sure! I decid­ed to try to write a nov­el while I was in Rus­sia for twelve days to do a pro­file of the only US male syn­chro­nized swim­mer. My chil­dren were very young at the time, and when I trav­eled, I would show them on the cal­en­dar how many break­fasts at home I would have to miss. Usu­al­ly my old­er son was fine with it, but when I told him I was going to Rus­sia for twelve break­fasts, he freaked out — like real­ly the only tantrum he ever had. I felt so guilty and mis­er­able. But when I got to Rus­sia, I thought to myself, I’m doing these sto­ries so that I can make ends meet, but it isn’t enough. I have to try to get ahead, so I’m going to try to write a nov­el—which, by the way, is how you know how lit­tle jour­nal­ists make. The idea that you would try to write a nov­el to get ahead finan­cial­ly is bonkers. 

I was so vexed by how much mon­ey I did­n’t have that I start­ed writ­ing the sto­ry of a rich fam­i­ly. I want­ed to write about wealth and trau­ma and whether it was bet­ter to be from mon­ey or to have sur­vival skills. That was my ques­tion going in, but the book end­ed up being much more about trau­ma itself, and the foun­da­tion­al trau­ma of this fam­i­ly was a kid­nap­ping. Grow­ing up, I knew some­one who’d been kid­napped. It’s not the same sto­ry as in Long Island Com­prise, and it’s not the same fam­i­ly for sure. But I asked for my friend’s bless­ing and he gave it to me.

When I start­ed writ­ing Long Island Com­pro­mise, I wasn’t tru­ly ready to write some­thing of its scale and com­plex­i­ty and a nar­ra­tion that spans years. It was good that I start­ed with Fleish­man instead; it’s struc­tured like a mag­a­zine pro­file, which is what I write as a jour­nal­ist. I still wasn’t ready to write Long Island Com­pro­mise when I returned to it, but I had a con­tract for it by then. So I just kept turn­ing in new ver­sions of it. I’ve nev­er had such a hard time writ­ing some­thing. I’ve nev­er worked so hard on some­thing. When I say I wrote nine drafts, I’m not talk­ing about revi­sions. They were whole­sale rewrites. When I was talk­ing to pro­duc­ers about adapt­ing it for TV, I told them, ​“Guess what? There are thou­sands of pages of this that are not in the book. There’s plen­ty of run­way for this.”

ESB: It struck me that the Fletch­ers and their com­mu­ni­ty are bound togeth­er not so much because they have a shared his­to­ry, but because they all share a strug­gle with wealth and none of them — rich or poor — are hap­py. I won­der, what was it like to tell this sto­ry set in the ​’80s today, at a time of eco­nom­ic cri­sis? How did the cur­rent time affect your story?

TBA: I can’t think of a bet­ter way to tell a sto­ry about mon­ey and the way that cap­i­tal­ism has changed and the way this coun­try has changed vis-a-vis the Amer­i­can dream than telling it from the point of view of a super wealthy fam­i­ly. Every­body knows fam­i­lies like the Fletch­ers. Their sto­ry is the sto­ry of this coun­try. I know a lot of peo­ple who were set for life and then sud­den­ly weren’t. 

Though, what’s inter­est­ing is that now, in the 2020s, that can’t real­ly hap­pen. I wasn’t raised with mon­ey, so when I was research­ing ways for the char­ac­ters in Long Island Com­pro­mise to lose theirs, I asked my friends who have gen­er­a­tional wealth. Every­one was like, ​“I don’t know.” Then I real­ized why they didn’t know: because they can’t lose their mon­ey. Nowa­days, mon­ey is so diver­si­fied. And the amount of mon­ey some peo­ple have is so absurd that they would have to work pret­ty hard to lose it. 

I think of this book as the fic­tion com­pan­ion to Thomas Piketty’s Cap­i­tal. When I read that book I sobbed, because I real­ized that young peo­ple today don’t stand a chance of acquir­ing wealth unless they go into finance. Unless they go into a busi­ness that is lit­er­al­ly: Here is how your mon­ey can make mon­ey through loop­holes that not every­one can see. That’s the only way you can become rich now.

ESB: Most of your char­ac­ters are moral­ly gray. 

TBA: Out of curios­i­ty, did that make it unpleas­ant for you to read the book?

ESB: I didn’t dis­like them, but I will say that the book gave me a lot of anx­i­ety. Espe­cial­ly every­thing with Nathan, Carl’s old­est son. Nathan tries to become a part­ner at a law firm despite know­ing that he’s not cut out for it, and he ends up los­ing his job. Then he invests his mon­ey with an old friend instead of a well-estab­lished bank — anoth­er major mis­step. I kept think­ing, If only I could sit down and talk with you, I could fix this.

TBA: That’s very Jew­ish of you.

ESB: Even Zelig, Carl’s father, is a moral­ly gray char­ac­ter. He suf­fered in the Holo­caust, but the things he did to sur­vive are the root of the family’s prob­lems, no?

TBA One of the ques­tions of the book is: Were we gang­sters? No. But did we know how to set a fire? That, to me, is the sto­ry of sur­vival. Jew­ish sur­vival in this coun­try is doing what you had to do to sur­vive. Until you get to a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion and then they’re just doing what they want.

ESB: On that note, I find this book much more Jew­ish than Fleish­man. It delves into the Holo­caust and inter­faith mar­riage. There are two bar mitz­vah scenes, which are the emo­tion­al tent­poles of both the fam­i­ly and the book. Why did you decide to fea­ture Jew­ish themes and tra­di­tions more promi­nent­ly in this book?

TBA: For peo­ple like you, who came to Fleish­man from a Jew­ish per­spec­tive, it was just a book. But peo­ple who inter­viewed me for non-Jew­ish out­lets thought of it as a real­ly Jew­ish book, which con­fused me. And I real­ized, Oh my God, I guess choos­ing the name Fleish­man was enough to label the whole book. To choose speci­fici­ty instead of flat­ness was a deci­sion, but it was a writ­ing deci­sion. I did not set out to write about Amer­i­can Jew­ry, even though that’s what I end­ed up doing.

It was a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion with Long Island Com­pro­mise. You start out with a sto­ry and if you’re being rig­or­ous, then you ask your­self, What are the details of this sto­ry? I took my ques­tions about mon­ey, and I attached them to a fam­i­ly. And then I had to ask: Where is that fam­i­ly from? What are their jobs, and how old are their kids? If one of the kids is eleven, that means there’s a bar mitz­vah com­ing up … And so on. Peo­ple don’t remem­ber the broad strokes. They remem­ber details. I was just talk­ing to anoth­er author and she told me that her pub­lish­er asked her to change the name of one of her char­ac­ters. And we were debat­ing whether that was anti­se­mit­ic? It was a Jew­ish last name. I don’t think it was — I think it came from the ten­den­cy for any­one who’s try­ing to sell some­thing to say, Let’s appeal to the great­est num­ber of peo­ple we can. But because I’ve spent so many years doing jour­nal­ism and not hav­ing the choice to change some­one’s last name or oth­er details, I know that it’s the speci­fici­ty that allows peo­ple — includ­ing peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds — to see them­selves in this Jew­ish nov­el. I mean, the inter­view before you was with a non-Jew­ish woman who could­n’t get over how much the char­ac­ters were like her fam­i­ly. So should you change the name of your char­ac­ter to some­thing more gener­ic? No, you should make it weird­er. You should make it more memorable. 

ESB: Speak­ing of craft, I’d love to talk about the sym­bol­ism of the house in this book. None of the char­ac­ters feels safe in their homes, right? Carl was kid­napped right out­side his home; Nathan’s house is destroyed; Beam­er is kicked out of his; and Jen­ny is a squat­ter. What does home mean in this story? 

TBA: You know, no one’s asked me a ques­tion like that before. I think that some­times, when you’re writ­ing a nov­el, you put your char­ac­ters in a place where you would like to be. While I was writ­ing Fleish­man, I was long­ing to move back to New York so much that I put Toby and Rachel in Man­hat­tan. Through my work, I could day­dream about being in Man­hat­tan all day. 

I lived in about six or sev­en homes grow­ing up, maybe more. I haven’t ever count­ed them. My first year in col­lege, the house we were liv­ing in burned down. Maybe what I was doing in Long Island Com­pro­mise was fan­ta­siz­ing: What is it like to have a home? What is it like to have a place that peo­ple asso­ciate with you? I haven’t giv­en that much thought to the sym­bol­ism of home, except that it was always remark­able to me that I could not get the Fletch­ers to con­sid­er sell­ing their estate. That it’s the most obvi­ous solu­tion to their finan­cial prob­lems. And it does­n’t even occur to them.

ESB: Like Fleish­man, Long Island Com­pro­mise is going to be made into a tele­vi­sion show. I know you wrote the screen­play and were the exec­u­tive pro­duc­er for Fleish­man and will be doing the same for Long Island. Do you find it chal­leng­ing to con­vert your books into screen­plays? Did you walk into this book know­ing you might want to do that, and think of ways to make that eas­i­er for yourself?

TBA: No, not at all. There’s noth­ing I did with this book that would make any­thing eas­i­er on any­one! This book was like a dis­ease that I final­ly hand­ed in to cure myself. I gave it to my agent with a note say­ing that sec­ond books are hard; it’s time for me to be done with this and what­ev­er my third book will be, it’ll be born out of the fail­ure of this one. And then peo­ple start­ed read­ing it at the agency and at Ran­dom House, and they would call me up cry­ing about their upbring­ing and their homes. And part of me was like, No, no, no, this is sup­posed to be my ter­ri­ble sec­ond book. Then the book leaked through a scout, and I got a let­ter from an Apple exec­u­tive. It was so effu­sive and it said every­thing I was try­ing for in this book. And I was like, Oh my God, is it pos­si­ble it worked? I was hop­ing some­one would bid on it because of the suc­cess of Fleish­man, and I’d live to fight anoth­er day, but I’m still very con­fused about how it turned out like this. 

You know, at one point in the book, Beam­er says to his daugh­ter, who is rehears­ing her flute, ​“If you keep try­ing” — in a case of the least wise char­ac­ter say­ing some­thing very wise — ​“If you work real­ly hard and put all of your ener­gy into some­thing, then the thing will rise up to meet you.” That’s how I felt about this book. Some­how, I worked hard enough that some­thing happened. 

By the way, in my first draft, Beam­er was a stu­dio exec­u­tive. Then I made him into a writer because I need­ed a place to put all my anx­i­ety about writ­ing this book. I’m not a drug user, but basi­cal­ly every­thing else about Beam­er is from me. Like, Have I been at a dri­ve-through des­per­ate­ly try­ing to fin­ish writ­ing some­thing? Yes, I have.

ESB: I love that Beam­er is the lit­tle bit of you because I was look­ing for you in the book the whole time. One of the things that make your mag­a­zine pro­files unique is that you always dis­cuss your own expe­ri­ence of your sub­jects. But it was hard­er for me to find you in this book. 

TBA: God, they’re all a lit­tle bit of me. The only one I’m not like is Jen­ny. I’m not like Jen­ny at all, oth­er than the fact that when I’m sort of shocked or trau­ma­tized, I get very tired. My pub­lish­er had arranged for me to do all these things the day Fleish­man came out. They took me to book­stores to sign books, and to speak to the press. I could not, I was so tired. Not even adren­a­line was help­ing me. And as they were dri­ving me to dif­fer­ent book­stores, I’d fall asleep. Final­ly, I was like, I don’t even think I can do my event tonight. They gave me two hours before the event to rest. And I went to my moth­er, who lived near­by, and said, ​“Lis­ten, I have to sleep here for a cou­ple hours.” I slept and I felt bet­ter. She drove me to the event, and I kept telling myself, Don’t wor­ry, no one’s going to be there. When we pulled up, I saw the crowd inside and just fell right back asleep. 

But I’m a bit like Ruth, too. I look at my kids and some­times they’re like casu­al­ly pay­ing for some­thing with their Apple Pay and I want to tell them that I used to keep the lights off at home so that the land­lord would­n’t come for the rent.

ESB: Which char­ac­ter do you think most deserves the end­ing that they got?

TBA: Oh, that’s so inter­est­ing. You know, I spend so much time with these peo­ple — how could I judge them? Because they’re of me, even though they aren’t me. I can’t bring myself to even think that their sto­ries are over, that’s how close to them I still am. Hmm. I guess a minor char­ac­ter, Mick­ey, gets his deserved ending.

ESB: I think Nathan gets the end­ing he deserves. He learns from his mistakes.

TBA: You know, I guess deserve is a strange ques­tion, because it’s moral. They were all head­ed toward this end­ing from the start. As a writer, it’s real­ly good when you ask not What do I think should hap­pen, but what is obvi­ous­ly going to hap­pen. You know enough about human nature that you’ve set this up, what’s going to happen.

ESB: Zelig has made up a sto­ry about his past, and that sto­ry becomes a touch­point for the whole fam­i­ly. What are the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this type of fam­i­ly lore?

TBA: I’ll tell you through a metaphor. The oth­er day I was wear­ing a neck­lace and I saw my moth­er and I said, ​“See, I wear this neck­lace that you gave me, because it brings me luck.” And she said, ​“I did­n’t give you that.” I had mis­tak­en the neck­lace I was wear­ing for the one she gave me. Does that mean it’s fake, that the mean­ing behind the neck­lace isn’t real? It’s still the one I thought my moth­er had giv­en me. There was no lie, there was no pur­pose­ful false­hood, right? And so what is the sig­nif­i­cance of the neck­lace as an heir­loom: is it the neck­lace, or is it the sto­ry that goes down from gen­er­a­tion to generation? 

I know that one of my most annoy­ing qual­i­ties is my pur­suit of truth. Part of the rea­son I still iden­ti­fy very strong­ly as a jour­nal­ist and jour­nal­ists are still my favorite peo­ple is because that’s a jour­nal­ist qual­i­ty. But I don’t think most peo­ple are in the pur­suit of truth. I don’t even think that’s a goal for most peo­ple. They are just try­ing to survive.

ESB: Like how when Carl and Ruth miss one of their son’s bar mitz­vahs, and then when her chil­dren men­tion it years lat­er, she’s like, ​“What are you talk­ing about? We were at the bar mitzvah!” 

TBA: I mean, isn’t that amaz­ing? I don’t think Ruth is try­ing to lie. I think Ruth has rewrit­ten the past so she can live with herself.

ESB: The Mandy Patinkin cameos in the book are such joys. If you don’t get Mandy Patinkin to be in the series, that would be such a crime, I’ll—

TBA: Die, I’ll die. Like, who’s going to play it? No one but Mandy Patinkin!

ESB: One final ques­tion. ​“There’s a dyb­buk in the works” is a phrase the fam­i­ly uses to explain away bad things with­out hav­ing to exam­ine why they hap­pened. It almost becomes an emo­tion­al crutch for them. Why do the Fletch­ers need that?

TBA: I think that in a soci­ety where peo­ple have decid­ed that your good for­tune is not a bless­ing, but some­thing you earned, you ascribe the things you can’t explain to the super­nat­ur­al. There’s a dyb­buk in the works. Also, if you read the book close­ly, you’ll see that an actu­al dyb­buk is present in almost every scene. It’s haunt­ing the Fletch­ers the whole time.