James Mcnamara

Endless petty squabbles

Family squabbles described in mind-numbing detail make one wonder what the point is of this — already dated — novel

issue 30 June 2018

I wrote foul-mouthed marginalia throughout Benjamin Markovits’s A Weekend in New York. Not because Markovits is a bad writer — he has a deserved reputation for excellence. But because this study of a privileged American family reaches for a significance it doesn’t achieve, and leaves a self-consciously literary novel with a surfeit of detail.

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