Publisher's Weekly Review
Italian playwright Massini's lush, sprawling novel in verse, which inspired an eponymous Broadway show, presents a fictionalized story of the Jewish immigrant Lehman family and their multigenerational role in the history of American capitalism. Heyum "Henry" Lehman, son of a cattle merchant, arrives in America from Bavaria in 1844. He enters the cotton trade in Montgomery, Ala., and his two brothers, Emanuel and Mayer, soon join him. Decades later, with enough capital to invest in banking, oil, and automobiles, the brothers groom three of their sons for places in the business. The third generation of Lehmans thrive despite the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, and they are aided by cousins who go into politics and law. They persevere through WWII and the Red Scare under the leadership of Robert, but in the 1960s, Robert fails to prepare the company for the oncoming computer age, and after a slump in the 1980s, the family business is sold to American Express. Massini's energetic, plainspoken epic reads like a never-ending folk ballad ("He left with America fixed in his head/landed now with America in front of him/but not just in his thoughts: before his eyes./Baruch HaShem!"). Fans of experimental fiction will find this rewarding. (June)
Kirkus Review
A fictional history of the immigrant family that built a great American financial institution. Source for the eponymous stage production, Massini's imposing novel in verse tells the story of Lehman Brothers, the venerable investment banking firm whose unimaginable collapse in 2008 helped trigger the Great Recession. Beginning with the arrival from Bavaria, in the mid-19th century, of brothers Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer and the establishment of first a grocery store and then a cotton trading business in Montgomery, Alabama, Massini follows three generations of this German Jewish family as it sinks its roots in unfamiliar soil and then, through shrewdness, daring, and tireless work, forges a worldwide financial empire. Expansive and intimate, sober and playful, Massini's novel focuses less on arcane financial maneuvers and more on the outsized personalities of the Lehman family members who drove the company's success. Among the most memorable are Sigmund, son of Mayer, who steels himself for leadership by memorizing a list of 120 draconian rules for ruthless business dealing, and Emanuel's grandson Robert "Bobbie" Lehman, art collector and owner of racehorses, who shepherded the bank through the Depression and into the modern era, sowing the seeds of both its continuing prosperity and its ruin. Massini departs from the Lehman financial saga for a portrait of Herbert Lehman, Sigmund's brother, the liberal reformer who challenged some of the excesses of capitalism displayed in the family business while serving as both governor of New York and senator from that state. With the aid of a vibrant translation from the Italian, the novel takes on an epic quality as the Lehmans relentlessly expand the scope of their business, accumulating vast wealth and economic power, while devoting themselves with equal single-mindedness to the acquisition of social status, the latter effort symbolized in their drive to shoulder aside rivals and move to the front row of their New York City synagogue. A vivid account of one remarkable family's role in shaping modern America. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The Lehman Trilogy, a 2012 Italian radio play turned into a full-length play that has been a hit throughout Europe and in London and New York, was set for Broadway when COVID-19 hit. Anyone eager to see it will get quite a show in this enthralling treatment of the same material; to wit, the rise, efflorescence, and fall of Lehman Brothers, the massive investment bank whose crash in 2007 spurred the decision that some banks are "too big to fail." Massini tells the whole story, from Bavarian Jewish immigrant Hayum Lehmann--Henry Lehman--disembarking in New York in 1844, moving to Alabama, and launching the family fortune with cotton trading to the moment, 38 years after the last Lehman brother dies, that the megabank collapses, as somewhere, "Around the table / a glass table," three generations of brothers observe. Each of these 11 men advances the company in his own way. The form of the narrative is verse, free but full of poetic devices (e.g., alliteration, anaphora), the manner alternates between realism and character vivisection, and the tone is that of the most ingratiating omniscient storyteller who ever spun a yarn. On stage, just three actors perform it; on the page, it's a panoramic circus, and ravishing, rollicking reading all the way.
Library Journal Review
Based on the West End and Off-Broadway hit set to open on Broadway in March 2020, this saga shows the Lehman family traveling from Bavaria to Alabama, where Henry sets up a profitable textile shop, then flourishing as his brothers Emanuel and Mayer invest in cotton, coal, and transportation that brings wealth but sometimes hurts the community. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
