Helen Schulman

Helen Schulman writes literary fiction about families confronting the pressures of contemporary culture. This Beautiful Life follows the Bergamots after they move from Ithaca to Manhattan and enroll their son Jake in an elite school. A private video forwarded by Jake spreads online, exposing the household to judgment while each family member struggles with responsibility, loyalty, and the distance between public appearance and private experience. HarperCollins published This Beautiful Life in 2011. Schulman has taught fiction at The New School, where she has also served in leadership roles within the writing program. Her work often examines how technology and ambition alter intimate relationships without reducing characters to simple moral examples. This Beautiful Life uses the Bergamots’ crisis to explore parental blindness, adolescent decision-making, and the speed with which a single action can escape anyone’s control. The result is a domestic novel attentive to both individual mistakes and the institutions that magnify them.