Reviews
A brilliantly braided book: a hilarious coming-of-age memoir, a sharp stake through the zombie heart of the WASP ascendency, and the bravest work of filial love I've ever read., "Early on inCheerful Money, Tad Friend writes, "Grievances in my family are like underground coal fires: hard to detect and nearly impossible to extinguish." This fine memoir is about some of those grievances and also about the money, remorselessly leaking away, a circumstance that leads to the book's subtitle: The last days of Wasp splendor. Read it also for high comedy and here and there a signature Waspish sting.", Friend is a ruthlessly brilliant social taxidermist and a joyous chronicler of life's telling bric-a-brac. With compassion, humility, and wit, he transforms his exotically accomplished and eccentrically intelligent Wasp relatives into a winsomely flawed American Everyfamily., With its WASPish brew of aunts, alcoholics, and dashed promise (not to mention an assortment of Inkys, Wassas, Lettys, Goggys, and Hannys),Cheerful Moneygoes down like a bitter-sweet late-summer cocktail made with a jigger of Cheever and a splash of Wodehouse., American Wasps are now as rare as black truffles, and rarely has their story been told so candidly or entertainingly as it is in Tad Friend's wonderful new memoir, Cheerful Money .... Friend's book is such a winning family chronicle that the decline he describes is less a fall than an exhilarating ride, less sad than heartwarmingly comic., PRAISE FOR CHEERFUL MONEY : "Every now and then, a book comes out that's so well written, so beautifully carved and psychologically true that its subject almost doesn't matter--digging a sewer to Rwanda or suburban gardening. Tad Friend's tome on WASP-itude goes down effervescent as a glass of champagne. Having had my own spell married into such a clan of American aristocrats, I found Friend's tale side-splittingly funny and touching, without being the least predictable. It has the verve of Nick and Nora Charles with their silver martini shakers, and some of the mournful insights of Kafka. This will become a classic.", The world laid bare here in Tad Friend's winning voice emerges from struggles he's waged in his heart.Cheerful Moneyis a terrific memoir about the nuances of loss, wrenching revelations from a golden boy who has chosen to face the cost of a legacy of denial., Cheerful Money , by a self-stinging Wasp, is sharp as well as blunt about this problematic caste, but also rather proud of its salty aspects. An insightful, highly humorous memoir, exceptionally well-written., " Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendoris taxonomy-as-memoir, an absolutely brilliant gift to the reader, wherein Friend essentially holds open the door to the exclusive club.... Friend is very funny... But he also is sad, sometimes angry, and in an effort to understand why his family withheld and bequeathed affection, hauls us with him over the emotional shoals.... There is so much grace here, the angry young man that denied his destiny now a middle-aged father who sees his place on the continuum -- and is conflicted. "[That] Walker and Addie might not even think of themselves as Wasps," writes Friend, of his twins born in 2006. "This seems to me at once sad, exhilarating, and inconceivable."", "[A] splendid book.... Tad Friend does fall far enough from the tree to give us a delightfully rendered account of not only his self-discovery but an examination of "The Last Days of Wasp Splendor." It is gorgeously written.... Oh, reader, you are in for a treat."-- San Francisco Chronicle, "[A] splendid book.... Tad Friend does fall far enough from the tree to give us a delightfully rendered account of not only his self-discovery but an examination of "The Last Days of Wasp Splendor." It is gorgeously written.... Oh, reader, you are in for a treat....Cheerful Money, in a way, is Friend's own letter to his father from a son who sees his flaws as his own, his strengths issuing from his father, deepened and enriched by his own efforts. In Tad's case, the sweetness flows and we the readers are richer for it.", "[A] splendid book.... Tad Friend does fall far enough from the tree to give us a delightfully rendered account of not only his self-discovery but an examination of "The Last Days of Wasp Splendor." It is gorgeously written.... Oh, reader, you are in for a treat.", "Using cash as a "behavioral-management tool" is just one Wasp peccadillo that Friend nails inCheerful Money, a suave, sharp-witted, generally intoxicating but occasionally sobering expose of his native culture. He notes that the acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, popularized in 1964 by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, is both redundant and inexact, and he proceeds to delineate a more precise picture in his fond but probing personal history.... Friend is not the first to write about emotionally constipated ancestors, the waning of Wasp power or the painful erosion of beloved family holdings: George Howe Colt'sThe Big Housesprings to mind. But, drawn to "the ruinous romance of loss," Friend is one of the least whiny and most incisive insiders to chronicle this privileged world, and he does so with style and soul.", "Friend's talents are well suited to his material.... The tone he strikes is elegaic, even tender (at times) as he chronicles the futile pursuit of gracious living, now sinking into the "ruinous romance of loss."", Cheerful Money is side-splittingly funny and touching, without being the least predictable. It has the verve of Nick and Nora Charles with their silver martini shakers, and some insights mournful as Kafka's. This will become a classic., With its WASPish cast of aunts, alcoholics, and dashed promise (not to mention an assortment of Inkys, Wassas, Lettys, Goggys, and Hannys),Cheerful Moneygoes down like a bitter-sweet late-summer cocktail made with a jigger of Cheever and a splash of Wodehouse., "[T]ouching and poignant. At the beginning of the book, Friend writes, "I am a Wasp because I harbored a feeling of disconnection from my parents, as they had from their parents, and their parents had fromtheirparents."Cheerful Moneyis Friend's funny and enlightening way of piecing together that disconnect.", "WASPs' legendary courtesy is at the heart of Tad Friend's winsome memoir, which recounts, with amiable nostalgia, the foibles and predilections of a declining caste.... But Friend's book, "Cheerful Money," derives a good part of its fun from the more eccentric relatives who broke from traditional WASP patterns.... Friend, a staff writer at The New Yorker , is very good at cataloging the more salient WASP idiosyncrasies: the WASP "sprezzatura," as he calls it, which avoids any evidence of striving or seriousness because it would suggest "that you aren't yet at - haven't always been at - the top."", "American Wasps are now as rare as black truffles, and rarely has their story been told so candidly or entertainingly as it is in Tad Friend's wonderful new memoir, Cheerful Money .... Friend's book is such a winning family chronicle that the decline he describes is less a fall than an exhilarating ride, less sad than heartwarmingly comic."-- Washington Post, American Wasps are now as rare as black truffles, and rarely has their story been told so candidly or entertainingly as it is in Tad Friend's wonderful new memoir,Cheerful Money.... Friend's book is such a winning family chronicle that the decline he describes is less a fall than an exhilarating ride, less sad than heartwarmingly comic., Cheerful Moneyis side-splittingly funny and touching, without being the least predictable. It has the verve of Nick and Nora Charles with their silver martini shakers, and some insights mournful as Kafka's. This will become a classic., Tad Friend's Cheerful Moneygraciously toasts the gilded dawn and twilight of Waspdom, viewing (with rather un-Waspy intimacy and forthrightness) its diminishing cachet and power through his own prestigious bloodline-rich with drunks, depressives, and loonies., [I]n Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor, author Tad Friend is able to paint a picture of the now-faded cultural elite of America with the delight and disgust that only an insider can. Part memoir and part analysis, Friend shares the funny and occasionally heartbreaking stories of his life, family and friends just as the money is running out and prestige is waning.... He catalogs servants, summer homes and Shetland sweaters that define the culture. But more intriguing, he deftly captures the delightful torture of being raised in a culture of restraint.... Ultimately the book reflects on more than birthright, with his take on the influence of family, tradition and loss that shapes one's life., "Friend's memoir, called "Cheerful Money," is a droll, psychologically astute and sometimes nostalgic look backward at the WASP world that was.... Recognizing that it's his inherited duty to entertain and amuse his audience, even as he's occasionally serving up grisly confessions and nut-hard kernels of emotional truth."-- Maureen Corrigan , NPR, In Tad Friend's stunning memoir about the lost world of the Wasp elite, the Hamptons' Georgica Pond comes to seem as Edenic as Thoreau's Walden. Friend animates a deeply private, aristocratic way of life with detailed, moving intimacy., Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendoris taxonomy-as-memoir, an absolutely brilliant gift to the reader, wherein Friend essentially holds open the door to the exclusive club., Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor is taxonomy-as-memoir, an absolutely brilliant gift to the reader, wherein Friend essentially holds open the door to the exclusive club., "Friend's memoir, called "Cheerful Money," is a droll, psychologically astute and sometimes nostalgic look backward at the WASP world that was.... Recognizing that it's his inherited duty to entertain and amuse his audience, even as he's occasionally serving up grisly confessions and nut-hard kernels of emotional truth.", PRAISE FORCHEAP: "Every now and then, a book comes out that's so well written, so beautifully carved and psychologically true that its subject almost doesn't matter--digging a sewer to Rwanda or suburban gardening. Tad Friend's tome on WASP-itude goes down effervescent as a glass of champagne. Having had my own spell married into such a clan of American aristocrats, I found Friend's tale side-splittingly funny and touching, without being the least predictable. It has the verve of Nick and Nora Charles with their silver martini shakers, and some of the mournful insights of Kafka. This will become a classic.", " Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor is taxonomy-as-memoir, an absolutely brilliant gift to the reader, wherein Friend essentially holds open the door to the exclusive club."-- The Oregonian, "Friend's talents are well suited to his material.... The tone he strikes is elegaic, even tender (at times) as he chronicles the futile pursuit of gracious living, now sinking into the "ruinous romance of loss.""-- The Christian Science Monitor, Cheerful Money, by a self-stinging Wasp, is sharp as well as blunt about this problematic caste, but also rather proud of its salty aspects. An insightful, highly humorous memoir, exceptionally well-written., "Mr. Friend has written an elegiac family history-cum-cultural taxonomy of a declining empire."-- Wall Street Journal, "Friend's talents are well suited to his material. He broadens his tale into the chronicle of an entire slice of society and not just that of one cluster of families. He also knows enough to keep somewhat of a lid on the self-pity. The tone he strikes is elegaic, even tender (at times) as he chronicles the futile pursuit of gracious living, now sinking into the "ruinous romance of loss.""
