What an expansive book! I can definitely see why it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Besides being very well written, with a degree of insight into characters and relationships we don't often see in fiction, from the halfway point on I had the peculiar sense that the characters were people with free will, making choices apart from any vision that the author (or others, or fate) may have had for them. If you only read novels for plot or character, you won't like this book. But if you read to understand more about life, or just to wonder more about life, then I enthusiastically recommend "The Privileges" to you.
Eh? Picked this up at the public library annual sale... the story was o.k. but the ending wasn't good.