I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. On one hand it has a bit of a The Great Gatsby feel to it, while on the other hand the story seems to blather on with no end in sight, and no real reason to keep me reading. As I continued reading The Privileges I started to see the deeper meaning behind the story, and I was impressed.

The book is about a uber rich family. Adam and Cynthia started out rather humbly, but grew to be very rich and very powerful. With two kids, Jonas and April, the family is about as perfect as perfect can get. That is if you can look beyond Adams questionable business ethic, Cynthia certianly does.

As the kids grow up they start to create struggles for themselves. Having been fed with a silver spoon their entire lives, they seek challenges to help define them as individuals. Unfortuantely, the paths they chose are all too typical of the super rich, they chose a path of excess and self-destruction. They lack character so they try to build character in all the wrong ways. With no real sense of right or wrong they bumble through mistake after mistake with no end in sight.

An interesting look into the lives of the privileged, with the sobering reality that things aren't always as they seem.