The Love of Money

The Nest is a book about how money makes you do terrible things. I initially almost stopped reading it at about the 20% mark because the characters we’re introduced to at that point can easily be summed up with “assholes gonna asshole” and who wants to read that? Fortunately the characters are a bit more nuanced then that, and I was ultimately glad that I continued reading.

The plot follows four siblings through one year of their lives. In this particular year, they were supposed to receive a large inheritance from some investments that their father had set aside back when they were still very young. The inheritance, which they called The Nest, was supposed to be quite large due to some lucky circumstances. However, at the start of the book their mother dips into The Nest and extracts a very large sum to bail their oldest brother out of an ugly situation. A large enough sum of money can buy quite a lot of silence. The other siblings are peeved about this, as they’ve been planning on that inheritance and making rash money decisions with the thought that The Nest would arrive and bail them out. Basically, money made them act like assholes. The rest of the book is the siblings facing up to what they’ve done and partially redeeming themselves, though I don’t think you could ever say the oldest brother actually redeems himself he’s a narcissist start to finish. If you can get past that initial disgust as the characters to stupid and awful things because of money, the rest of the book is really enjoyable as the siblings reconnect and figure out that maybe money isn’t quite as important as they thought.

I enjoyed it, and it’s quite well written. I don’t think this is a must read, but if you’re looking for a book about quiet family drama this is one to look for.