What to Do About the Solomons
A “funny, sexy, and smart” multigenerational saga following the secret lives of an (over) extended Jewish family—from Israel to America (Judy Blume).
More than oceans divide the Solomons. And now, it’s a scandal. Prodigal son Marc Solomon, an Israeli ex-Navy commando living in Los Angeles, is falsely accused of money laundering through his California investment firm. As his home is raided, Marc’s wife, Carolyn ―concealing her own dicey past―makes hopeless attempts to hold their family of five together. Not surprisingly, news of Marc’s disgrace makes its way from Santa Monica to a kibbutz on the Jordan River Valley, and the rest of the mortified Solomon clan: Marc’s self-absorbed wannabe movie star sister, Shira; his rich, powerful and fed-up construction magnet father, Yakov; his childhood sweetheart, Maya; and his brother-in-law Guy, a local ranger turned “mad artist.” As the secrets of the community are revealed through various memories and tales, we witness the tenuous bonds that can keep the Solomons together, and the truths and rumors that could ultimately tear them apart.
Elegant, witty, and provocative, What to Do About the Solomons weaves contemporary Jewish history through a distinctly modern and very savvy tale of family life. “I ended [it] absolutely swimming with affection, not just for the characters but for the multiple worlds that created them . . . there’s something profoundly lovely―and loving―about the Solomons” (New York Times Book Review).
Bethany Ball
Praise for WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE SOLOMONS"Ball switches points of view for a mosaic of family members and associates in crisis and adrift. Her terse, sharp-edged prose captures settings ranging from an American jail where highest bail is king to a French military post where they haven’t won a war since Napoleon, but they sure know how to live. For all its humor, penetrating disillusionment underlies Ball’s memorable portrait of a family, once driven by pioneer spirit, now plagued by overextension and loss of direction, unsure what to do with its legacy, teetering between resentment, remorse, and resilience."—Publishers Weekly"Ball, with great humor, profound wit, and notable insight, vividly captures a singular family....This novel from a most promising writer has been compared to the work of Isaac B. Singer and Grace Paley, as well as Nathan Englander and Jennifer Egan. Try Eudora Welty with sex and Jews.”—Booklist"Ball's prose is compulsively readable, almost addictive, and she has a wicked sense of humor."—Kirkus Reviews"A riveting family drama which feels at once solidly classic and bitingly contemporary; if Transparent and A Thousand Acres snuck off and had a kid, you'd have What To Do About The Solomons. With their screw-ups, their sadnesses, their pasts catching up on them and their futures slamming in hard, these people are fascinating to be with and oddly hard to leave. Isn't that always the way with family - as long as they're not your own?"—Belinda McKeon, author of Tender"Bethany Ball lays bare the complexities of modern life in prose that has the resonant simplicity of a fairy tale. Readers who love I.B. Singer and Grace Paley now have another writer to adore."—Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening"Bethany Ball, in her fearless literary debut, goes deep into contemporary life to give the reader characters so alive we have met them and a story so true it takes fiction to tell it. From Israel to Manhattan to Connecticut and back, on a bridge of family, money, lies, drugs, and false accusations. For the reader, a knock on the door will never be the same."—Scott Wolven, author of Controlled Burn“Bethany Ball is a sharp, sensitive writer whose gift for details—a gesture, an article of clothing, a square stone, a meal eaten by a lonely, neglected ten-year-old—reveals, magically, whole worlds. She is both tender and relentless with her characters: her affection for them is palpable, yet she subjects them to exquisitely revealing examinations. We’re lucky she does, for here in What to Do About the Solomons a family and its most harrowing moments come to life so completely we forget that we’re not reading about ourselves and our own families.”—Nelly Reifler, author of Elect H. Mouse State Judge and See Through“In What to Do About the Solomons, Bethany Ball peels back the manicured surface of family and community to surgically expose a world of hurt. Told in a razor-sharp prose that takes no prisoners, this is that rare book that can make you laugh while it’s breaking your heart. I couldn’t get enough.”—David Hollander, author of L.I.E.
