The Oppenheimer triplets have been reared with every advantage: wealth, education, and the determined attention of at least one of their parents. But they have been desperate to escape each other ever since they were born.

Now, on the verge of their departure for college and so close to their long-coveted freedom, the triplets are forced to contend with an unexpected complication: a fourth Oppenheimer sibling has just been born. What has possessed their parents to make such an unfathomable decision? The triplets can't begin to imagine the the power this little latecomer is about to exert - nor just how destructive she'll be to their plans . . .

I could not put this down - an absolute masterclass in writing about families. Funny and searing and biting and moreish - deserving of five stars and more.

Absolutely brilliant! One of my favourite reads of the year. Explores the relationship between triplets and their 'latecomer' sister conceived as they leave for college. Explores race, religion, sexuality, and left-wing politics in a way that never feels pandering.

This is the first book I've read by the author and was drawn to this after reading the synopsis and reviews for her previous novels.
The wealthy Oppenheimer family- parents Salo and Johanna and their triplets Harrison, Lewyn and Sally live a privileged life in New York, when the triplets go to college Johanna makes the decision to have a fourth child and we see the impact this has on an already distant and dysfunctional family.
The Latecomer started well; it held my interest with the story of how Sao and Johanna met and raised their children. I was interested in Sally's college experience and her distant relationship with her brothers but had little interest in Harrison and Lewyn's college experiences and I found it fairly tedious to read these chapters. The novel did feel overlong, with too many descriptive passages related to areas I had little interest in. However, there is still much of it that was well written and engrossing and held my interest. A mixed read for me.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Another great novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz. . I always worry that if i have loved all previous novels by an author then the new one will not be as good but I think this may be my favourite of hers to date .

It is very different from her last novel 'The Plot' which was a literary thriller as this time we have a layered and complex family drama set between 1972-2017 in New York. . It is a very character based novel , slow burn and like her previous work she uses a very descriptive literary prose which won't be for everyone but for me i love her writing . Part 1 focuses on the relationship between Sao and Johanna and gives us a background to what will follow. The main part of the book follows the Oppenheimer triplets through their college years and reads more like the classic American coming of age sort of drama . Harrison is the smart one, Lewyn the weird one and Sally is 'the girl'. None of the triplets are likeable as they have been reared surrounded by wealth and privilege but at the same time you are engrossed in their lives. Part 3 is told from the POV of 'the latecomer' who was born 17 years after the triplets . .

The book is set with a backdrop of the art world (strong Goldfinch vibes) and also the impact of 9/11 plays a big role along with the higher education system in the US , all 3 of which interest me . It's addictive reading and i found myself thinking about the characters when i stopped reading . I guess if I'm to say anything negative it would be that it is quite a long book and the style of writing will not be for everyone but if you enjoyed her previous then this comes highly recommended !

This was a five star read for me. The character development was so well done and the complexities of the issues and themes explored throughout were so beautifully executed. I've already recommended this book to all my book loving friends and will not forget this one any time soon. Absolutely loved it!

I liked the sound of this book and I also choose it because I enjoyed the author's previous book The plot. Unfortunately this one I didn't enjoy at all, from the first page to the last I found it overly detailed and I really struggled to finish. I know that other people will absolutely love it though it wasn't too my taste this is just my personal preference. Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I found this to be an absolutely compulsive read. Following the Oppenheimer triplets and their lives growing up was riveting. Their friends and issues became enthralling. The fourth Oppenheimer completes the quartret. Great characters, great insights and a pacy read.

After having loved 'The Plot', I had great expectations of this novel, 'The Latecomer' - and I definitely wasn't disappointed.

Johanna and Salo give birth to triplets: Harrison, Lewyn and Sally. Unlike the general consensus, none of the children get on well - in fact, they despise each other. Harrison is pig-headed and thinks himself an intellectual; Lewyn is kinder, but resents his siblings; Sally enjoys isolating herself from the boys, instead leading a separate life. It is, somewhat, implausible, mainly because it would seem unlikely, given what we know about triplets/twins etc, that such hatred of each other would be real. More to the point, that Johanna, in particular, seems oblivious to it, instead thinking she has a perfect trio of children. Having said this, she is oblivious to a lot of things in her life, and prefers to have an 'ideal' of in her imagination which is far from the gritty reality - a sad reflection of Johanna being disillusioned.

What makes the novel more intriguing is the arrival of Phoebe, the actual 'latecomer', who is born 17 years after the triplets. Essentially, when Johanna discovers something about Salo, she pays to get the last remaining egg out of its storage and a carrier carries it - then Phoebe is born. The story becomes more complicated when we learn about Stella Western's role, and an additional child that plays a part in the tale.

'The Latecomer' is extremely well-written - and in its backdrop there is 9/11, and the wealth of the art world, as well as other topical issues. I particularly like Korelitz's use of the first-person plural (us) - so it is never clear which one of the triplets' voices is coming through. Towards the end, when Phoebe's voice takes over, it is slightly less successful, I feel, and the transition feels a little clunky. However, this is a very original premise and a book whose plot will stay with me for a long while.

A worthy successor to The Plan this was a beautifully written and plotted family saga told from the perspective of several different characters which help to build the narrative and ensures a wonderfully satisfying read.

Highly recommended to all readers of intelligent and original fiction.

Jean Hanff Korelitz’s last book, The Plot, was a morality play on the issue of authorship and the use of ideas. Some of those concerns come into play in her latest book The Latecomer but they are dealt with in a very different mode and in a much richer and deeper scenario. The Latecomer is a family drama, an exploration of art and aesthetics, a deeply biting satire and reflection on the human condition done through the lens of some decidedly likeably unlikeable, or at least damaged characters.
The Latecomer is ostensibly the story of the wealthy, Jewish Oppenheimer triplets, born through IVF and out of desperation to their parents Johanna and Salo. Salo carries with him a deep and abiding guilt for the deaths of two friends in a car accident in which he was driver (although not at fault). Johanna is trying to assuage that guilt through her love but Salo finds more solace in modern art and later in the arms of another. The triplets themselves – Harrison, Sally and Lewyn – never get along, despite their mother insisting that they are all one happy family. The central portion of the novel, set in 2000 -2001 is the story of their college years and the damage that they do to each other. This section sometimes feels like a classic American college / coming of age drama. The Latecomer of the novel is Phoebe, born from the fourth fertilised egg as the first three triplets, but eighteen years after the birth of her siblings. As a young adult, Phoebe takes it on herself to try and put the broken pieces of her family back together.
There is little in the way of plot in The Latecomer, this is really a social commentary and character study of the triplets, their parents and later Phoebe (although she is probably the least developed of the six, her agency is in seeing her siblings for what they are). But they are flawed and relatable characters and their stories are engrossing and engaging. And by the end of the book Korelitz has brought these individuals to life and earns her many catharses.
This is very much an old fashioned style of narrative with extremely wealthy characters at its centre and many have compared to the works of Evelyn Waugh. But it has some very current concerns and along the way Korelitza explores and commenst on a range of aspects of modern life, particularly American modern life – progressive education, identity politics, affirmative action, the role of religion, family dysfunction, intergenerational trauma, the nature of art and art collection and even the ongoing impact of 9/11.
Despite the fact that the drama is all interpersonal, among characters who have some not particularly endearing traits, The Latecomer is a heartfelt and engaging novel. And in the end a cathartic one.

I thought that this would be a book that I would really enjoy.and I did for the first 25% or so.

I started to lose interest after that, there was so much un necessary detail that made the story drag. I barely even got to the 4th child coming along before I gave up.

Thanks to the publisher for this book to read ,unfortunately it was not for me.

Sibling rivalry is just one piece of the patchwork quilt of themes subjected to the darkly satirical eye of Jean Hanff Korelitz in her latest novel “The Latecomer”. A sprawling, complexly plotted saga, it follows the lives of the Oppenheimer family, wealthy, privileged, Jewish and, apparently irredeemably dysfunctional.

Set in New York, between the years of 1972 and 2017, in its forensic dissection of the existential problems that beset Salo Oppenheimer, his wife Johanna, triplets Harrison (the smart one), Lewyn (the weird one), Sally (the girl) and the eponymous latecomer Phoebe, and its incisive skewering of issues like class, wealth and privilege, it’s reminiscent of Henry James or Edith Wharton or even Dickens. This effect is heightened by the author’s use of chapter headings that dates back to the Victorian era when fiction was often serialised. Comically exaggerated, they give a taster of what’s to come. For example, “Chapter Eighteen, in which Lewyn considers the grave responsibility of guardianship, and the seat beside the toilet turns out to be the best one on the bus”.
To say the novel is comic is to skate over some of the not-so-subtle threads exposed in the course of illuminating the subconscious (and conscious) motivations of this fragmented facsimile of a family. It’s an embarrassment of riches. Just to name a few, we have adultery, surrogacy, class, race, religion, politics and art.

As Korelitz says, in an interview about the book, (in a take on Tolstoy) “all unhappy families are different, but no unhappy family has ever been quite as different as the Oppenheimers”. That all four children were conceived in a laboratory and the “ancestral petri dish” (as it’s regularly described), is neatly analogous with the coldness maintained between them from birth, it’s not directly implied that science is responsible for family dysfunction, but the hint is slyly dropped. The assistance of test tubes and gestational carriers to aid conception can hardly be held to blame for the particularly frigid relations of the individuals spawned thereby, but it’s a clever deceit on Korelitz’s part.

As in her novels “Admission” and “The Devil and Webster” Korelitz casts her satirical eye over the world of higher education and takes delight in puncturing its many hypocrisies, delusions and pretensions. Walden Academy, the prep school attended by all the children, is a melting pot of everything that’s ludicrous in the sacred ideology of liberal education, where “every student marched in lockstep to his or her mandated different drummer”.

This is the sixth novel I’ve read by Jean Hanff Korelitz, who has, besides a brilliant gift for storytelling, an extravagant (described by some as verbose) writing style, which may be an acquired taste, but is in my view never excessive. It’s notable that two of her novels have been adapted for the screen – “Admission” (a movie) and “You Should Have Known” (the TV series retitled “The Undoing”) and another “The Plot” is an upcoming TV series to stream on Disney+ starring Mahershala Ali.

Korelitz is quoted as saying writing “opens up some mystical pathway inside us, making all manner of revelation possible”. The characters of “The Latecomer”, in stumbling along their rocky paths towards epiphany, similarly tread their own mystical pathways, where misreading the signposts, wrong turnings, and senseless deviations lead them very close to falling over the cliff. It’s only through the purposeful intervention of “the latecomer” Phoebe that they are ultimately saved. Phoebe is the only character whose motivations seem straight forward – she would like “a functioning happy family”. Although she has a right to feel, as her sister Sally defines it “existentially defrauded” by being left on the shelf (or in the safe deposit of Horizon Cryobank) until it seemed opportune to thaw her out, as her mother assures her, she is not “some random person [they] were saddled with … [she was] their missing piece”. And as the missing piece she not only puts the final touch to the addled jigsaw of the others’ lives but fortuitously begets the happy ending beloved of Victorian novels.

My one criticism is that the mother Johanna, is too lightly sketched in. Perhaps it was a case of needs must, as the other characters consume so much, but as arguably the most oppressed and least compensated of the family, it’s regrettable that her side of the story “slides away” as irretrievably as do her hopes and dreams of enjoying a happy family life. Trying to achieve such an entity was always going to be a big ask with a husband who “behaved towards them [his children] as if the fatherhood protocol had been explained to him by authorities, and he ceded to their expertise.”

It’s a testament to the skill of Korelitz that although most of the book's characters are unlikeable (deliberately so, given the concept of the story) they are all intriguing, complex and relatable to the point that whether you empathise with them or not, you can’t help but be thoroughly engaged with their stories.

The book has something of the fable about it, the tongue in cheek moralistic tale that says if desperately unhappy people all just learn to love each other, they’ll live happily, if not ever after, at least until the next tragic car crash or terrorist attack or explosive scandal.

It’s the kind of book that leaves you wanting more which is always the formula for a great story. If we don’t get more of the Oppenheimer family, at least I hope we get more of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s uniquely original and dazzling writing.

Thank you to Faber & Faber who provided me with an advance copy of the book.

Following the rich yet distant Oppenheimer triplets, we explore the past, present and future of a single family, observing how the past affects the future, watching how the smallest actions can have the biggest consequences., and gradually becoming familiar with a family who seem only to want to remain separate from each other.

This is one of those books that you feel like you inhabit rather than read - I truly felt that I had lived in the world of the Oppenheimers for forty years by the novel's close. That having been said, this is a book that leans heavily on the author's gift for writing rather than any dramatic plot points, so if you like a lot of action, then this is likely not the book for you.

While I have loved this author's previous novels, this one is a hard one to rate - I did feel swept up by the family but at the same times I sometimes grew frustrated at the lack of anything substantial actually happening - this is very much a novel concerned with minutiae. I also heartily disliked most if not all of the characters until the very last section of the book, which made it a difficult one to sit with sometimes.

That the author is exceptionally deft is never in doubt, but this one didn't quite do it for me in terms of being so heavily cerebral - I like some internalising but it felt like the whole book was an inner monologue at times and I just wanted someone, anyone, to do SOMETHING.

That having been said, the last section of the book felt like a breath of fresh air, and ultimately redemptive - the victory does feel hard-won though.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for granting me a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this author’s last book The Plot but I didn’t really know what to expect from her new release. I knew it would be a family drama, probably tinged with tragedy and perhaps a thought-provoking hook. Sadly, I trudged my way through it and really struggled to retain interest.

The Oppenheimers are a wealthy Jewish family living in Brooklyn. Salo and Johanna became parents to triplets via IVF. Harrison, Lewyn and Sally have never really bonded either with each other or their parents and all three of them can’t wait to leave home. When the time comes, Johanna can’t bear to be alone, so she makes the decision to have another baby. Will this latecomer be a blessing or a curse on the Oppenheimers?

Salo and Johanna meet at the funeral for Salo’s girlfriend, who died in a car accident that Salo escaped. Of course, it’s a strange place to meet your spouse but I was intrigued to see how things would pan out for them at this point. Johanna seemed to be an odd, naive girl with a genuine fascination of Salo but I got the feeling that she perhaps admired him like a piece of art rather than truly loved him.

Salo clearly has mental health problems and they were met by intense grief and guilt for the mess he caused in his youth. This causes him to retreat into himself and back out of family life, meaning his wife and children have very little to do with him. His is a very tragic story but I’m not sure it was given much light in the book.

While I can see how the triplets would be distant from their aloof father, I really couldn’t understand why they had the same unattachment to their mother and even weirder to each other. I can buy siblings drifting apart as adults, especially if there are a lack of shared interests, but I found it very hard to believe that they’d never shared a closeness. Unfortunately, it just made them all feel very inauthentic as people, which obviously ruined a lot of enjoyment for me.

Through Johanna, motherhood is a relatively strong theme in the book, although I think it could have been stronger. I felt Johanna’s despair at all three of her children leaving at once and the conflict between wanting them to grow up into functional adults and wanting to keep them close. I know that some women do have more children, as their kids grow because they simply can’t bear the thought of not having anyone to take care of or their identity as a mother changing. There is another mother in the book but we don’t really get a proper look at her life and I did really miss that.

The Latecomer is certainly mis-titled. The youngest Oppenheimer sibling Phoebe is hardly featured until the final third of the book and although she does play a significant role in the ending, I definitely didn’t think the book was about her. I couldn’t connect to any of the cold, strange characters and therefore, I really wanted to just finish it. The plot is quite dense and together with the unlikeable characters, I really wanted a bit more excitement and intrigue.

The premise of this book sounded so up my street but unfortunately, it just didn't work for me. The beginning was too much telling and now showing, which made the pacing super off and I had a hard time getting into the book. Might work better for me if I ever decide to reread.

Thank you to Netgalley and Faber & Faber for sending me an advanced copy

Having loved The Plot I was very excited to be granted the chance to read The Latecomer early and it did not disappoint. The author seamlessly writes about a world in which feels so descriptive that it could be real and characters flushed with such emotion and nuance you feel you could know them. Thoroughly enjoyable read, as is no surprise from Jean Hanff Korelitz!!
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Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC!!

The Latecomer follows the wealthy but disfunctional Oppenheimer family: Salo and Johanna, their IVF triplets, Harrison, Sally and Lewyn and baby Phoebe (the fourth embryo, who Johanna decides to have through a surrogate when the triplets leave home for college)

I found this book a little hard to get into at first, possibly because I struggled to relate to the characters in the Oppenheimer family as they all seemed a bit entitled! However, I became more invested in the second half when Phoebe becomes more involved and the story starts to unravel. Perhaps she is the missing piece of the puzzle that can help jigsaw the family together?

A slow-burning family saga which portrays the delicacy of sibling and parent relationships and how these can be affected by life events. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the advance review copy of the book!

Any review of this book in my opinion , will be unable to do justice , no matter how experienced or knowledgeable the reviewer, the rare and exquisite emotion that overcomes the reader when awareness dawns with the joy of acknowledging they have been allowed to read what must surely become a masterpiece . So here goes with a brief synopsis of what must surely be inadequate in the extreme. It is never made clear until much later in the book which family member is narrating the family history. A tragic car accident; a traumatised youth. A young couple together as if in a port in a storm attempt to build a family life struggling from an anchor of apathy, unfulfilled needs and desires., and many more unsuitable reasons for hoping there will be any chance of success in this union .Unhappiness is contagious and so a multiple birth presents mixed emotions and unrealistic expectations. A family not so much at war as coldly and unemotionally removed from any warm feelings towards each other to the point of virtual withdrawal. Each of their lives, the traumas, the competitive jealousy, the drip feeding of casual cruelty , the dramas and anxieties leave few pages for any hope this epic family saga can end well. Slowly we see personalities destroyed, courage diminished, and a sense of self worthiness questioned as each member deals with the damage to self esteem in an attempt to live in their own way a happy and fulfilling life. So no spoilers allowed, but into the mix comes a hidden entity, and from an unexpected source a conclusion that defies any expectations and fulfils every promise a reader can only dream of. All three dimensional characters each with their own storyline of tragedy, hopes and dreams and disappointments written with infinite attention to detail that only a superb writer and accurate research can deliver. An honour and rewarding experience to have been given the opportunity to read this masterpiece, memories of which will linger long after the last page. Many thanks to author, publisher and NetGalley for this unforgettable ARC.

I’d describe this book as realistic fiction. The author has done an amazing job at creating imaginary characters and situations that depict the world and society. The characters focus on themes of growing, self-discovery and confronting personal and social problems. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.