Heather, The Totality

Heather, The Totality is an absorbing portrait of a girl, the way her parents revolve around her, and what happens when someone else is pulled into her orbit. Mark and Karen Breakstone have a fairly ordinary life of luxury which is fully cemented when their daughter Heather arrives into their lives. As she grows up, their respective relationships with her change, but they both continue to keep her as the central figure in their family. Meanwhile, a man who lives far away from their privilege will soon also be brought into contact with Heather, and again she will become a central focus.

Weiner, known best for the TV series Mad Men, writes in a distinctively blunt and detailed prose style as the narrative starts by setting up how the Breakstones come to be and then showing how their family unit moves and evolves. In between this, he cuts to snippets of the story of Bobby, a troubled young guy who escapes his drug addict mother and time in prison to work on a construction crew. The result is a surprisingly absorbing book that details the tiny elements of human life and how different people can become focused on one person. Heather as a character reflects the way parents see their own children in specific and personal ways, meaning that it takes until her perspective is explored to see how her parents’ may or may not be unfounded. Weiner uses these various perspectives and the minutiae of life to show a privileged life in its anxieties and successes, and what happens when an outsider lurks on the edge.

The plot is mostly understated, brewing arguments and thoughts, and its pacing is likely to feel familiar to those who’ve seen Mad Men, especially in the progression of Sally Draper in that series. There is lingering menace, but mostly it is a short and sharp novel about the small details of life and intricacies of family units. It is one for drama fans, not full of action but an intriguing portrait of a family that could be read in a single sitting.

To begin with, this is like reading two separate books, one about a life of privilege, and one of abuse. Heather is the central cog around which her mother and father revolve. She is beautiful, intelligent and empathetic. Both of her parents are obsessed with her in their own ways. Bobby grows up poor, neglected and abused. His inner monologue is a very strong voice in the book, and we soon understand that he is completely out of whack with the rest of the world. The stories eventually collide and entwine, with a violent outcome (don't want to give any spoilers). This is a short book, and quickly read, almost like a treatment for a longer novel, but satisfying in its brevity.

A little gem of a book with parallel stories of privilege and poverty which colliding a violent incident. There is a vague sense of unease and unfulfilled lives throughout and a lack of real emotion from any of the characters. An unsettling read which I really enjoyed!

Manhattan financier Mark Breakstone is successful enough at his job, but he seems destined never to reach the top echelon. Nevertheless, when he's introduced by friends to Karen she sees sufficient potential to throw in her lot and soon they are married and living in a nice apartment close to Park Avenue. Not too much later a beautiful and seemingly gifted daughter, Heather, is born. So adorable is their offspring that it isn't long before her parents are actively competing for her affections.

In a parallel storyline we’re introduced to Bobby Klasky. His life is not so blessed. Brought up in Newark by a heroin addict mother, Bobby finds trouble easily. A series of escalating crimes follows, rounded off by a stretch of prison time. He’s going to be trouble, is Klasky.

It's clear that the paths of Klasky and the Breakstones will cross. It's equally certain that it’ll end badly. But how will they cross and just how badly will it end? You don't have to wait long to find out as this is very short novel - designed, I think, to be read in one sitting. As the tension is wound up I found myself inventing any number of endings, though not the one that eventually transpired.

I was attracted to the book by the fact that it's written by the creator of the brilliant television series Mad Men. Well this is nothing like the series… or is it? As some others have observed, there is a sense of moral ambiguity regarding the actions taken by the characters, which leads to a somewhat conflicted view as to who is the good guy and who’s the baddie here. For anyone who has watched episodes of Mad Men and witnessed the activities of Don Draper and Roger Sterling, you'll recognise this. The tension is well ramped up through the tale and I liked the flow of it, with its relative lack of dialogue. Worth catching.

Firstly this is short very short, you can easily read this in one sitting.

Without giving away the plot this is a story of 2 family groups , deliberately placed at opposite scales of the social spectrum but they have more in common than they would like to think as both families are dysfunctional. They are brought together by the daughter of the rich family and well any other information would give away the plot.

Why should you read this book , well the writing especially of the middle class family is pin sharp , i read sections out to my wife such was the humour and the sharpness of the work. , the second party in the book is less defined closer to stereotype but the book holds it together and avoids this trap (just)

The finale will annoy many but i didnt mind it seemed honest and real.

Highly recommended it is long enough to make its point and to tell a story which seems contemporary

Tense and deadpan in God's-eye journalistic style, Heather, The Totality is a spare and sparse hypnotic story about people tumbling helplessly towards irrevocable breakdown. The storytelling is almost cold and distant as it rummages through the characters' lives, past and present, but the view of the characters is close-up and personal, delving into their most private thoughts, real and perceived.

I admit that I couldn't put this down for love or money (or even sleep) once I'd started, its pacey telling pulled me in and wouldn't let go. I started and finished it in the same evening, and stayed up till the small hours to find out what happens in its satisfying, if bleak, denouement.

Mark and Karen Breakstone have produced, by sheer luck, a pleasant daughter, Heather, whose sheltered and comfortable life as the centre of her devoted, doting parents' affections has moulded her into someone quite special; her carefree, luxurious existence has endowed her with the ability to empathise with other people without judgement, and to imbue her, in adolescence, with a desire to help those less fortunate than herself and her parents – which, in her quite privileged place in the social and economic hierarchy of New York, is almost everyone.

But her sunny disposition and youthful beauty draws the attention of more sinister people, against whose covetousness of her attractiveness and good fortune she is unprepared, having lived in the gilded and often suffocating cage of her parents' affections all her life.

Heather The Totality is a fairly short novel, at 144 pages, but it is absolutely perfectly formed, and its fast pace and sinister, unblinking, impassive irony gives a deceptive weight to deeper issues of parenting, rich-poor divide, opportunities and sheer bloody good – and bad – fortune. Weiner has crafted a novel that is far more than a simple tale of family life, and examines in an uncomfortable light the polar ends of the spectrum of fortune and misfortune, and the tragedy that ensues from such divides.

Many thanks to the publisher, Canongate, for a review copy of Heather, The Totality via NetGalley