A young boy discovers a dead body in the intriguing opening
to this book, but the rest was a disappointment. The title should be Bad Shallow People,
although “bad” is really too nice a word for these despicable rich folks with
no conscience. Cheating with one’s
husband’s best friend and cooking the books at the tennis club are mild
compared to the other dirty deeds performed here. By the end I realized that these awful people
were even more unscrupulous than I thought.
I know this book is supposed to be funny and satirical, but it did not
strike me as either. The characters are
almost all mean-spirited, and their actions just become increasingly outrageous
as the book progresses. The references
to the competitiveness at the tennis tournament struck a chord with me, as a
tennis player, but the rest was just not my thing. I was surprised that a
twenty-year-old could work as a bartender in New York, but he is one of the few
who is mostly innocent of any wrongdoing.
Even a woman not on Fire Island, where the action takes place, concocts
a false sexual harassment accusation against a co-worker, jeopardizing his job. Retribution here is way worse than the crime
being avenged, so that everyone has to watch their step—sometimes quite
literally.
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