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The Smash-Up
- A Novel
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Rebecca Lowman, Dion Graham, Shayna Small
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
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The Smash-Up
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Publisher's Summary
Smart, sublime, and wickedly clever, The Smash-Up captures - then transcends - our current polarized moment
“An exhilarating ride ... hilarious ... a modern and energetic story about a marriage on the skids.” (The New York Times)
Ethan has always been one of the good guys, and for years, nobody has appreciated this fact more than his wife, Zo. Until now. Jolted into activism by the 2016 election, Zo’s transformed their home into the headquarters for the local resistance, turning their comfortable decades-long marriage inside-out.
Meanwhile, their boisterous daughter, Alex, grows wilder by the day. Ethan’s former business partner needs help saving the media company they’d co-founded. Financial disaster looms. Enter a breezy, blue-haired millennial making her way through the gig economy. Suddenly Ethan faces a choice unlike any he’s ever had to make.
Unfolding over fivet urbulent days in 2018, The Smash-Up wrestles shrewdly with some of the biggest questions of our time: What, exactly, does it mean to be a good guy? What will it take for men to break the “bro code”? How does the world respond when a woman demands more? Can we ever understand another's experiences...and what are the consequences of failing to try? Moving, funny, and cathartic, this portrait of a marriage - and a nation - under strain is, ultimately, a magic trick of empathy, one that will make you laugh and squirm until its final, breathless words.
What the critics say
“An exhilarating ride...hilarious...there are no heroes here; I got whiplash trying to figure out who I trusted and what I was rooting for, and the sensation was mesmerizing. Benjamin is like an overly chatty but skilled magician...a modern and energetic story about a marriage on the skids.” (The New York Times)
“Borrow names and plot elements from Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Satirize progressive parenting and education à la Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Then light it all up with the feminist fire ignited by the Brett Kavanaugh hearings - and what do you get? A fun, timely novel that’s unexpectedly full of hope.” (People)
“It is not the transposition of that well-trod narrative and its character types that compels; it is the contrast sharpened in the act.... Benjamin doesn’t remake Ethan Frome so much as she contends with it. The Smash-Up is an homage and a critique.... An astute commentary on the differences between Wharton’s time and ours.” (Los Angeles Times)