Present Value: A Novel
Books / Paperback
ISBN: 0812969553 / Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, September 2004
The perfect lives of toy company executive Fritz Brubaker and his attorney wife, Linda, unravel when his company's stock value plunges, he is arrested for insider trading, Linda's image conscious firm suspends her, their house is repossessed, and their kids run amok, as the power couple is forced to reassess their lives. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 18,000 first printing.
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Fritz Brubaker and his wife, Linda—an attractive couple in their mid-forties—have it all. He’s a toy-company executive and she’s a million-dollar-a-year lawyer. Their children are in private school; they have a McMansion in a Boston suburb and a cottage on Nantucket. But their comfortable world is suddenly turned upside down when Fritz’s company’s stock tanks and he is arrested for insider trading. Linda’s image-conscious firm suspends her. Their houses get repossessed. The kids go haywire. Watching the Brubaker family’s lives unravel is the best way to see the stuff from which they’re really made. <br>This clever, very funny novel is a post-millennial snapshot of America that shows what happens to an economy built on greed when its chickens come home to roost. It’s the story of a family gone wrong, and its attempt to reset its course.<br>The author of two successful thrillers, Sabin Willett delivers in this ambitious new novel the kind of witty social commentary we associate with Tom Wolfe, Jonathan Franzen, and Zadie Smith. But he writes in his own original voice, breaking new ground as he describes a changed world. <i>Present Value</i> is a provocative, wonderfully entertaining ride—an irreverent, clear-eyed view of the way we live now.
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