The Beach Club
by Elin Hilderbrand
Having read several Elin Hilderbrand beach reads, I decided it was time to check out her first one. The Beach Club is twenty years old, and you’d never guess it unless you checked the copyright date. It was very much ahead of its time, so it’s no wonder Hilderbrand became an instant success.
One of the plot lines involves an attractive spinster who wants to tempt her married boss into a summer fling for the sole purpose of impregnation. Since he’s married, when she returns home after the summer, he won’t try to follow up and she can just become a single mother and live happily ever after. Hilderbrand never paints this character in a negative light or discusses her stupidity, intentional damage, or irresponsibility. In fact, when the girl’s initial attempt doesn’t work and a coworker starts flirting with her instead, she immediately makes him the next victim of her plan. The coworker is African-American, and she gives no thought of the difficulties a biracial child would face with only a single, white mother to pick her up from school. I’m not trying to make an argument against it, but I feel it’s unrealistic that she never even considers the extra challenges.
Another plot point is that the owner and his wife are considering selling their family hotel business. It’s lucrative and sentimental, but their teenage daughter doesn’t want to inherit it. Instead, she wants to quit school and run off to South America with her boyfriend. The hotel manager, as close to the owner as a son, also feel pressure of accepting responsibility from his long-term girlfriend. But while he drags his feet on a commitment, his girlfriend starts flirting with a new intern for the summer.
So, with interracial romance, a May-December relationship in reverse, and high criticism of the idle rich, it’s no wonder this novel was a “mover and shaker” upon its release. Hilderbrand not only made everyone want to vacation in Nantucket, but she also created such drama in its setting that those who weren’t able to afford a trip could picture all the tension and havoc that everyone else was having. If you go back and read this book now, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t written in recent, turbulent years. I didn’t actually like the novel, but I understand why everyone else did.
One of the plot lines involves an attractive spinster who wants to tempt her married boss into a summer fling for the sole purpose of impregnation. Since he’s married, when she returns home after the summer, he won’t try to follow up and she can just become a single mother and live happily ever after. Hilderbrand never paints this character in a negative light or discusses her stupidity, intentional damage, or irresponsibility. In fact, when the girl’s initial attempt doesn’t work and a coworker starts flirting with her instead, she immediately makes him the next victim of her plan. The coworker is African-American, and she gives no thought of the difficulties a biracial child would face with only a single, white mother to pick her up from school. I’m not trying to make an argument against it, but I feel it’s unrealistic that she never even considers the extra challenges.
Another plot point is that the owner and his wife are considering selling their family hotel business. It’s lucrative and sentimental, but their teenage daughter doesn’t want to inherit it. Instead, she wants to quit school and run off to South America with her boyfriend. The hotel manager, as close to the owner as a son, also feel pressure of accepting responsibility from his long-term girlfriend. But while he drags his feet on a commitment, his girlfriend starts flirting with a new intern for the summer.
So, with interracial romance, a May-December relationship in reverse, and high criticism of the idle rich, it’s no wonder this novel was a “mover and shaker” upon its release. Hilderbrand not only made everyone want to vacation in Nantucket, but she also created such drama in its setting that those who weren’t able to afford a trip could picture all the tension and havoc that everyone else was having. If you go back and read this book now, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t written in recent, turbulent years. I didn’t actually like the novel, but I understand why everyone else did.