The hazards of Boston breeding

Through sharp, straight prose, Jessica Shattuck effectively illustrates the nervous personalities and anxious lives of a broken family of WASPs. The characters in The Hazards of Good Breeding are swimming rather, drowning in the murky social waters of New England old money.

Their instability results from a constant fear they might not be able to keep up appearances any longer. Patriarch Jack Dunlap, eight months after divorcing his wife of 25 years, is in love with his Columbian housekeeper. Faith Dunlap, fresh from her divorce and nervous breakdown, has her first timid crush in 25 years. Elliot Dunlap, age 10, is as slight and forlorn as his mother. Caroline Dunlap, who just graduated from Harvard (like her father and older twin brothers), is wondering what the hell she is doing at home.

Home is the Boston suburb of Concord, Mass., with its manicured lawns, day schools, stately homes and country clubs up Route 2. Other local areas are mentioned throughout the course of the novel: Roxbury, Davis Square and even Newbury’s Emack ‘ Bolio’s ice cream parlor get nods. Shattuck muses that the parlor is a front for one of the biggest prep-school pot rings in New England, headed by a Harvard graduate student whose favorite activities include Tibetan monasticism and polymer networking. Details like this make the book feel more relevant.

The details of the book that are meant to symbolize the antiquated Puritan spirit Eliot Dunlap playing Paul Revere in his school play, the presence of an obnoxiously narrow-minded and Anglo-centric rich aunt and names like ‘Skip’ and ‘Teddy’ seem obvious. The humor of the book exists in its innate absurdity, its pointed caricature of what the term ‘good breeding’ brings to mind. The sarcastic humor throughout the book makes the heavy moods of the characters tolerable and the abrupt ending work. It is a Boston social study to be read while eating expensive ice cream and people-watching.