Burning Down the House

Mendelsohn’s (I Was Amelia Earhart) latest begins with a prologue featuring the bitter horror of a Russian girl sold as a sex slave, who eventually becomes the stalwart nanny of the moneyed Zane family. But unfortunately, this glimpse of humanity and strife can’t offset the flat main characters of the novel. Steven, the patriarch, remains one-dimensional, always taking meetings in hotel suites, sounding aggressive on the phone, and reading the Wall Street Journal; he’s exactly like any businessman from any soap opera, whose power sets plot points into motion like dominoes but never comes to life as a particularly complex person. Poppy is his niece, whom he adopted when his sister, her mother, died. After Poppy begins an affair with a close family friend, Steven intervenes in unforeseen dark places of the family empire, for incredibly unlikely reasons. All the while, the Russian nanny is steely and calm, a caricature of resilience. As the Zanes’ world crumbles, the details are well-wrought in Mendelsohn’s articulate voice, but the whole package never departs from the melodramatic. (Mar.)