Amazon.com
"I was guilty enough already, guilty of the same old thing since grade school: guilty of having come from a family that had had the lack of foresight--the poor taste, really--to come down in the world. It was almost anti-American, losing money the way we had." So muses George Lenhart, the ruefully ironic narrator of The Fundamentals of Play, Caitlin Macy's debut novel about money, class, and twentysomething relationships in the 1990s. Set in New England and New York City, this tale follows its characters from an old world of public schools and Maine summer houses, where the mention of money is vulgar but the lack of it even more so, into the brazen world of the new economy, where up-and-comers with no "name" are changing the rules of the game.

Before having come to work in the city, nothing much had threatened the sheltered and well-heeled lifestyles of the pedigreed Lenhart, his wealthy college roommate Chat Wethers, and their mutual childhood friend, the classically aloof Kate Goodenow. Nothing, that is, except for a shared (and silent) envy of Kate's high school boyfriend, Nick Beale, the poor "year-rounder" from the Maine coastal village turned boarding-school beneficiary turned pot-smoking dropout with exceptional sailing prowess and a passion for the Caribbean. Nick represents life lived without a script, and his story weaves in and out of the others' with a spontaneity that they so patently lack. His is a known spontaneity, though, and when the less definable one of skill, ambition, and new wealth--in the form of socially inept computer wizard Harry Lombardi--enters their sphere, the threads of the old world begin to fray. George looks on, bemused, as his class-conscious friends make careless (but transparently desperate) attempts to adjust their values, loyalties, and relationships.

Macy is adept at capturing the nuances of this last generation of aristocrats, caught between a desire for the past's fading gentility and the pressures of a faster game with a less rigid code of conduct. As George wryly admits, "It is hard to be reckless and still have one's shirts starched." Macy's language occasionally reflects the incongruous juxtaposition of these two worlds, mixing words like "foppishly" and "fleece" rather clumsily together, and her narrator speaks in a vernacular that seems far older than his mere 23 years, conjuring up visions of a Wharton-era New York rather than the city of the last decade. Her eye for odd details is deliciously surreptitious, however, and always viciously acute: she can paint sideline characters' entire personalities with one tidy turn of phrase, such as "Her face was tan--the whole party was filled with parents who had better tans than their children--and she wore pink lipstick that sat on her lips and beamed when they beamed." The Fundamentals of Play rides along on such observations, rewarding its readers with a glimpse into a (thankfully) disappearing world. --S. KetchumBook Description
Caitlin Macy's remarkable first novel is an evocation of a time and a place in which those things that were always so dependable--money, class, family--are threatened on all sides.

Narrated by George Lenhart, scion of a family who lost their fortune but not their good name, The Fundamentals of Play follows five friends from prep school as they enter adult life in New York City in the aimless, early nineties, before the internet explosion. They work entry-level jobs at investment banks, spend weekends in the Hamptons. At their center is the fickle, elusive Kate Goodenow.Everyone is in love with Kate and only George understands her heart was captured long ago, and for good.

Hailed as a Great Gatsby for the end of the twentieth century--The Fundamentals of Play introduces a brilliant new Lost Generation longing to live careless lives, while the situations around them are increasingly fraught with importance--and the world threatens to leave them behind. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (62)

Vapid, boring.
I was quite disappointed in this book. None of the characters are particularly well drawn or interesting, and their lives are similarly empty. I was looking forward to reading "Today's Gatsby", as one of the cover blurbs claims. Instead, this isn't even as good a story as an average one out of People Magazine. I'm not sure what the author was trying to do -- chronicle the lives of the well-heeled, or deride them; in the end, she did neither, nor did she succeed in capturing my interest.

I really liked this book:
I found this book to be a facinating tale of people in general. From the rich and well educated to the drop out. This book is well written and the audio tapes were great!

Hmmm.

Can't say I got anything useful out of this bitty book. It lacked substance and didn't seem worth reading. Which was a pity as the writer is clearly capable of writing well. The purpose of writing this book was unclear to me.

stick with the original
This book attempted an ambitious feat - to transport "The Great Gatsby" to the present day, but the author's reach was higher than her grasp. The characters behaved more like thirtysomethings - and yes, I do know people of the same class in real life, and they definitely do not behave like these characters. Anyway, the characters were for the most part, tissue thin, dull, and/or unlikeable, especially the woman for whom we were supposed to believe most of the males had been carrying a torch for since prep school. Yet, other reviewers have raved over this book, and its "fine writing" so maybe it's worth a shot.

jaunty? please.
I've read Gatsby.In fact, I've read everything of Fitzgerald's, the letters the short stories.I don't think Ms. Macy necessary has, but she has read Gatsby.Reading this book reminds me of those Star Wars ripoffs that spread out like a virtual diaspora after the initial trilogy was completed, where there seemed a desparate need to continue the legacy of a great story that alas, had come to an end.They were all plagued with these italicized voiceovers, which paraphrased lines from the movies."The Force is strong within my family.I have it, my father has it.My sister has it."And so on.

Macy, sadly, despite her Yale/Columbia lineage seems content to do the same with TFOP.Her use of the word jaunty, along with the word chin, recur with the sad frequency of someone who read the description of Jordan Baker a time too many.And the plot is practically ganked straight from Gatsby.The descriptions of how lousy it is to be poor, educated and a manhattanite are straight out of the soliloquy that Nick delivers as he is contemplating Broadway at dusk.Even worse, the dialogue that comes out of these characters is sad, uninspired, and even if accurate, virtually unreadable.

If you want to read a book that does gatsby justice, I suggest picking up The Catcher in the Rye, instead. ... Read more