Last House
After fighting in the Pacific, Nick Taylor feels grateful for his post-war prosperity, a fragile blessing. He believes in the promise of American-led progress, but following a secret trip to Iran in 1953, he is smart enough to question whether an American-led coup in Iran will bring such progress. Nick, now a lawyer for American Oil, can influence the restoration of the pro-American shah and turn those pipelines back towards the West. If he wants to, that is. If he succumbs to the charms of his Yale classmate turned probable CIA handler, Carter Weston.
Meanwhile, back home Nick’s wife Bet is struggling with her two young children and her thwarted dreams of an intellectual life. She met Nick when she was a secret codebreaker for the government—a job so secret she has never told him everything. But now the only secret is how much she hates being asked to edit The Modern Mapleton Household for the local Junior League. The effort of shaping quirky recipes from her neighbors into something readable feels like an imprimatur of domesticity she isn’t ready to accept.
This sweeping novel follows Nick, Bet, and their daughter Katherine as the 20th century becomes the American century then sours on the haunted prosperity that engendered such wealth. After all, as Nick and Bet’s son Harry says, all the planes and cars running on oil are really fueled by the ghosts of dead creatures from millennia past. As these touching characters grapple with their personal and collective responsibilities, Shattuck’s beautiful writing stitches meaning into their lives, wondering about the sacrifices of civilization, the privilege of retreating from it all, and the never-ending cycle of death and rebirth that human societies create. This novel is a masterpiece, crafted of small lives that together form the entire world.
