Lapham Rising: A Novel

Possibly the funniest book I have ever read. I laughed out loud at some point in each chapter, and quietly tittered about it while going about my day. Rosenblatt is a modern-day Jane Austin---he etches out the larger-than-life follies of the well-heeled as they encroach on the solitude of an anti-social loner. What a piece of work is man! Thanks for the laughs, Roger!

Harry March is quite mad. He was once a brilliant, best-selling writer, but now he does little but watch Murder She Wrote reruns all day and hold two-way conversations with his dog Hector. Harry is a recluse who lives in a small house on a tiny secluded island in a river in the Hamptons, avoids other people whenever possible, and keeps his life's savings piled on the floor of a spare room, not knowing how much is there and seldom spending any of it. Harry was happy with his life until ten months ago when Lapham, a pretentious multimillionaire, started to build an ostentatious mega-mansion near Harry's island, effectively destroying Harry's idyllic seclusion. "Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang!" go the workmen's hammers. The real world is knocking, and Harry must do something to make it go away. This scenerio, of course, could be the stuff of a horrific tragedy; instead, Rosenblatt has given us a wonderfully witty satire on pretentions and materialism, and to some degree on the pretensions of the anti-pretentious. This is a funny, funny book. It is one that I would gladly display in a prominent place in the library of Castle Pseudonymous, my summer cottage, if I could only find an exorbitantly expensive, signed, hand-illuminated first edition in gilt-edged Tibetan yakskin vellum.

An avid reader, not easily wowed, but Lapham Rising is perhaps one of the all time funniest, laugh-out-loud, fall-off-your chair novels I've ever had the ultimate pleasure of reading the first time - and a MUST read for the second time. Also the ONLY time I've ever considered offering a review here - and couldn't wait to shout praises to Roger Rosenblatt! I laughed, I cried and fell in love with brilliant, sad, insightful, wonderfully wacky Henry and his world. I have a new perspective on monster mega-homes and tree clearing happening close to home. Thank you, Roger, for your poignant observations.

I have never met Roger Rosenblatt, but having paid attention to his terrific essays (for instance on PBS's The News Hour) I am sure he is more sane than most on this planet. How then to explain how he has written such a wonderful, painful, and (yes) funny novel about a utterly insane man? And it's written in the first person! Perhaps the catch is that one winds up wondering whether it is the hero Harry March who's crazy, or everyone else. Or, if he is nuts, is it that all those "normal" people around him have made him so? This little book is a gem. Buy it and enjoy it.

Lapham is an incredibly intellectual, yet wildly hysterical look at not only the silliness of the rich, but the sad triviality of our time. The genius of the main character is found in his desire to remove himself from mass humanity, yet to become fond, even highly respectful of that unique example of a hard-working middle-class builder and a great father. After living in the Hamptons for many years, but, happily on the outskirts of the very famous and the very rich, I have had the opportunity to view some of the characters found in Rosenblatt's book first hand, and they are re-created with precision and hilarity. This is a book to read and to read again-- each time finding new humor and satirical nuance at every turn. I LOVED IT, AND LOVED IT AND LOVED IT!