In Rebecca Serle’s novel “In Five Years,” narrator and protagonist Dannie Cohan follows the path she set for herself as an adolescent. She becomes a lawyer with no ambitions for the courtroom, tackling instead the crisp, clear language of the law and contracts. “It was like poetry, but poetry with outcome, poetry with concrete meaning—with actionable power.” Dannie excels in writing and interpreting this kind of verse, and when we meet first meet her at age 28 these skills and talents win her a position at one of Manhattan’s renowned legal firms.

In December 2020, she becomes engaged to David, an investment banker for a real estate conglomerate. After they celebrate with a little too much wine and fall asleep, Dannie has a strange, lifelike dream. She finds herself five years into the future in an apartment with a stranger who seems to be her fiancé and with whom she makes passionate love. The dream is so real and disturbing that she seeks out a therapist hoping for an explanation.

Almost five years later, she gets together with her best friend Bella, a flighty, wealthy socialite and artist who seems to have dated half of Europe. Dannie meets Bella’s latest boyfriend: It’s the man from her dream. The rest of the novel focuses on this tangled relationship and the true meaning of Dannie’s dream.

“In Five Years” is a romance about time, love, fate, and death. Serle’s an engaging writer, and the final third of the book is genuinely moving.

But after the opening pages, I exchanged my role of reader for that of anthropologist. Serle’s characters were men and women I’d heard or read about but had rarely met in person. They are millennials, though very much unlike the ones I know, and they match some of the social and cultural trends making the news today. Here’s what I discovered when I put on my pith helmet and studied millenniales Manhattanenses.

In millennial culture, marriage ranks below work on the ladder of life. Dannie and David get engaged, but over four years go by without them ever coming close to exchanging wedding vows or rings. Dannie claims that they’re too busy, that something always interferes. So now the couple is in their mid-30s. Marriage, it seems, matters less than career and work.

Children rank even farther down this ladder. In this 30-something cast of characters, kids are notably absent. Dannie’s own casual regard for babies and children deserves as its theme song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” When Bella may be pregnant, Dannie thinks, “David would be a good father, and we’ll probably go ahead and have kids one day, but when I think about that future picture, us with a child, I often come up blank.”

The domestic arts are non-existent in the lives of these folks. They either dine in restaurants or order takeout, and with each meal they share mini-reviews of their culinary likes and dislikes. At one point, Dannie tells readers that she can’t cook, apparently oblivious to the existence of cookbooks. At any rate, these are people who take eating and drinking seriously, spending big bucks to satisfy their tastes.

Religion and faith also play no part in their lives. Even when Bella becomes desperately ill, no one seeks out the intercession of a deity or turns to the power and solace of prayer.

These field notes aren’t intended as a negative review. In fact, I owe a debt to “In Five Years.” It demonstrates, albeit unintentionally, some of the reasons why U.S. birthrates have tumbled so far below replacement level. It makes clear why traditional marriage has declined. It also affords insights into America’s younger “elites,” who are so caught up in money and prestige that they lose sight of life’s other riches.

Of particular interest are the seven blurbs on the back of “In Five Years.” All are complimentary, of course, and strikingly, all are written by women. They rightly praise the book for its “deft, propulsive prose” and its “compelling, ingenious plot.” “[I]t’s a novel about romance, friendship, the magic of good bagels, and what happens after you get everything you always wanted,” one reviewer writes. That last phrase, “you get everything you always wanted,” reveals the shallow depths of Dannie’s ambitions.

“Be careful what you wish for” is an adage particularly applicable to the young. Dannie wins her dream job – “It’s what I was born to do” – but at what cost? By the end of “In Five Years,” following a death and a broken engagement, she is just beginning to realize that life is messy, that it doesn’t operate by way of figures and legal contracts, and that a rich life means more than money in the bank.

This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News.

Image credit: Pexels