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July 9, 2008
Share house hell
When most of us think about “the Hamptons” we have visions of the super-rich escaping Manhattan on summer weekends for plush estates and expensive restaurants where might you rub shoulders with Steven Spielberg, Billy Joel and Jerry Seinfeld.
Jasmin Rosemberg takes us to the other side of the plush beach resort's tracks in her amusing new novel, “How the Other Half Hamptons” (5 Spot), set in a Long Island share house/pig pen where a few dozen twentysomething guys and gals look for summer fun on the cheap.
Rosemberg knows what she is writing about, having spent a recent summer living in a Hamptons share house and writing about it in a weekly New York Post column.
In the novel, Rosemberg follows three Manhattan girlfriends who decide to spend much of their summer in a share house. The characters are far from fresh — a party girl, a “nice” girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend, and a smart girl tired of living in the shadow of her older sister — but the journalistic aspect of the narrative will keep many readers turning pages.
Rosemberg would have been well-advised to stick to one protagonist in her first novel, but she does a good job of immersing us in a crowded and funky beach house that doesn’t seem like much of an escape from the jammed city where the characters work.
When I was young and foolish, I visited friends in a similar set-up in Dewey Beach, Delaware, and came away thinking it was like returning to college dorm life in your mid-20s (not a good thing). The non-stop drinking, drugging and…how shall I say this?…mating was quite awesome, however.
Reading “How the Other Half Hamptons” is a good guilty pleasure in the tradition of the MTV train-wreck reality series “The Real World” and “My Super Sweet 16.”
Posted by Joe on July 9, 2008 4:55 PM
