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The New Yorker: The Best Books of 2022
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The Today Show: 30 of the best books to sink into this summer
People: Best Books Summer 2022
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The New York Times review of THE LATECOMER by Allegra Goodman
“Fiction In this saga of a fractured family, Phoebe Oppenheimer, the titular
”latecomer,” narrates the inception, dissolution, and reconstitution of her clan.
Cryopreserved as an embryo and born seventeen years after her in-vitro-
fertilized siblings—triplets who “had been in full flight from one another as far
back as their ancestral petri dish’-Phoebe corrals a stupendous array of subjects
into her chronicle, among them art collecting, real-estate buying, chicken
husbandry, intractable rivalries, hoarders, a secret child, and Mormon pageants.
Turning on a disastrous clambake in Martha’s Vineyard on September 10, 2001,
which transforms the family utterly, the novel unfolds at a thriller’s pace, with
Korelitz leaving no loose threads in her complex tapestry of generational wealth
and woes across the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.”
“There’s a jigsaw-puzzle thrill to Korelitz’s family epic — the way it feels like a thousand scrambled, randomly shaped events until you’ve got the edges in place, and then the picture begins to resolve with accelerating inevitability and surprise. … By the time we’re done with these siblings, their lives have been turned inside out, and all their stored-up junk and secret treasures have been sorted, culled and curated for this immensely enjoyable sojourn with a truly memorable family.”
The New Yorker:
A lovely piece about THE LATECOMER in Publishers Weekly
“With every new book Korelitz publishes she adds another string to her bow, and she is a writer of many talents. YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN (2014) was a smart, psychologically intense contribution to the then hugely popular marriage thriller genre. THE PLOT, published last year, delivered a page-turning mystery that also delved into the murky morals of plagiarism. Now, with THE LATECOMER, she’s served up a contemporary play on the big, baggy 19th-century novel.”
“Wealth, long buried secrets, and deep resentments converge in this captivating family saga about the Oppenheimer triplets, born in Brooklyn in the early days of IVF.”
PEOPLE MAGAZINE, Best Books, Summer 2022
Always Authors Podcast with Emma Straub (THIS TIME TOMORROW)
Good Morning America
The bestselling author of "The Plot" and "The Undoing" is back with a literary look into an Upper East Side family from decades ago. What starts with a horrific accident progresses to a very intentional family -- with triplets, who are all extremely different. What happens when a fourth frozen embryo thaws into being 18 years later and joins the siblings -- and why?! You'll be flipping pages quickly to find out in this dazzling work of literary excellence from master of the written word Jean Hanff Korelitz.
Entertainment Weekly
The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz
The author of literary page-turners like Admission and You Should Have Known — which went on to become the high-trash Nicole Kidman limited series The Undoingin 2020 — plunges into family dysfunction with her latest; the sprawling tale of a set of wealthy, troubled triplets birthed in the earliest days of IVF.
New York Times May Reads
The Oppenheimers are comfortable in their Brooklyn home, but they’re not happy: Salo, haunted by a car crash from his college years, is stirred by art, and not much else; his wife, Johanna, wants nothing but a cohesive family. When their triplets prepare to leave home, she decides to have a fourth child, bringing long-held secrets to the forefront.
Oprah Daily
The bestselling author of The Plot and You Should Have Known (which was made into HBO’s The Undoing, starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman) is back with an ingenious family epic featuring the Oppenheimers. They are a Brooklyn Heights–based family—husband and wife Salo and Joanna and their triplets, Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally. Suffice it to say that this is not one big happy family. As the triplets—products of IVF, and yes, that becomes important to the story—prepare to leave for college, the quintet’s dysfunction shifts into high gear. It’s left to the “latecomer,” an unexpected fourth child, to perhaps prove that maybe people can change after all.
Library Journal
It's a marvelous story full of plot twists, intricacies, and depth in events that the reader will not see coming. Perfect for fans of character-based novels such as those by Sally Rooney or Lauren Groff.
Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review
Korelitz (The Plot) returns with an irresistible dramedy of errors about a singularly unhappy family. This is a sizzler.
Family tensions are on full display in Jean Hanff Korelitz's literary novel "The Latecomer." The wealthy Oppenheimer family has had a difficult road from the very beginning. Parents Salo and Johanna first met under tragic circumstances, and they struggled to conceive, eventually having triplets with the assistance of early-era IVF treatments. Growing up, the triplets felt no real sense of family connection, causing them to pretty much count down the days until they can go their separate ways. Desperate to keep her marriage and family together, Johanna decides to have a fourth child — their "latecomer" — who shakes up the family and changes things in unexpected ways.