It could happen to any family... What if it happened to yours? When the Bergamots move to the city, they're unsure how well they'll adapt. Soon though, Richard is consumed by his new job and Liz, who has given up her career, is hectically playing mother to six-year-old Coco and fifteen-year-old Jake. But the day Jake unthinkingly forwards a sexually explicit email attachment sent to him by a young girl is the last day of the Bergamots' comfortable middle-class existence. Within hours, the video clip is not only all over Jake's school, but all over the city - and all over the internet. Faced with impossible choices, what Richard and Liz do next risks destroying not only their marriage, their daughter and their place in the community, but also Jake - the child they have set out to protect. The controversial and explosive story of how one email can tear a family apart. 'One of the most gifted writers of our generation.' Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit From the Goon Squad 'A gripping, potent and blisteringly well-written story of family, dilemma and consequence.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
"This Beautiful Life stylishly dramatises the effect of new technologies on old moralities... Schulman cunningly constructs her controversy - fictional, though with well-judged shadows of some factual scandals - to make easy moralising hard for readers... a compelling and provocative moral fable..."
Guardian
"Far more intense and specifically observed than any soap operaor morality lesson, This Beautiful Life astringently peels away the panic and dissatisfaction of staying apace in Manhattan's fast track..."
Vanity Fair
"In the digital age, shame is just one click away... This Beautiful Life is a grenade of a novel: small, explosive and primed with a fizzing fuse of a premise."
