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Title: This Beautiful Life

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Helen Schulman

Narrator: Hillary Huber

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-02-11

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 77 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

When the Bergamots move from comfortable suburban Ithaca to New York City, theyre not sure how well they will adaptor what to make of the strange new world of the well-to-do Upper West Side. But soon Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying six-year-old Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is graciously taken in by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private day school.

But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an e-mail waiting in his inbox from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, scareda jumble of adolescent emotionhe forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend, and the video goes viral. Within hours, its not only all over the school but all over the cityand all over the Internet.

In the aftermath, Jake is suspended from school, Lizs social standing among the Wildwood moms is challenged, and Richards job is at risk. Good people faced with bad choices, they decide to fight back. But how? Do they use the very weapons wielded against themthe media and the law? And at what moral and professional cost? How they choose to react, individually and at one anothers behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy; they are completely caught off guard by the ramifications of their actions, not only to their marriage, their daughter, their place in the community, but to Jakethe very one they have set out to protect.

Critic Reviews:

A gripping, potent, and blisteringly well-written story of family, dilemma, and consequence. While the setting is thoroughly modern, the drama feels as ancient and inevitable as a Greek myth. I read this book with white-knuckled urgency, and finished it in tears. Helen Schulman is an absolutely brilliant novelist. (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love)

Members Reviews:

So so

From the paper reviews of this book, I expected something much better. It was an ordinary story of an upper middle class family's stressful experience and its consequences. The writing was unexceptional and narration was about the same. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, although if you were stuck listening to it, for some reason, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

A short story, not a novel

Would you try another book from Helen Schulman and/or Hillary Huber?

The narrator is superb and the story is compelling--but then it stops short. Right when things become interesting and complicated, the author employs a cheap narrative trick and the novel just ends. This results in it feeling like a short story (written by a writer with a deadline) instead of a rich novel. I was really dissapointed as the story was just fantastic and the characters layered.

Would you ever listen to anything by Helen Schulman again?

Yes.

Was This Beautiful Life worth the listening time?

Yes, but it stopped short.

Bad accent

How could the performance have been better?

I spent much of the first part trying to picture how to spell the name of the father figure in the novel.