A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: 420 Original date of publication: 1905 My copy: 2000 Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2000 The title for the book famously comes from the Ecclesiastes quote, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Lily Bart is possibly Edith Wharton’s most complicated character, and this novel one of the best portrayals of the glitter and cruelty upper class New York society. When the novel opens, Lily is 29 years old, unmarried, and trying to “keep up with the Joneses,” so to speak. Torn between her desire to fit in with society and a desire for a relationship, Lily fits in nowhere. This novel then is the story of her downfall. I first read The House of Mirth in high school, but really didn’t appreciate it the way I do now—or even understand the complexity of the themes that Edith Wharton explores. Reading The Age of Innocence a couple of years ago led to a newfound love for Edith Wharto...

Pages: 224 Original date of publication: 1940s-1990s My edition: 2010 (NYRB Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: The Strand, NYC, July 2011 The New York Stories is a collection of stories that Elizabeth Hardwick published between 1946 and 1993—years that spanned nearly her entire career as a writer. Hardwick grew up in Kentucky and lived for many years in New York City, working as an essayist for the New York Review of Books . She was married briefly to the poet Robert Lowell, who after their divorce married Caroline Blackwood , leading Hardwick to quip, “he never married a bad writer.” She was also friends for many years with the writer Mary McCarthy and lampooned her 1963 novel The Group . There is a theme to these stories; all of them deal to some extent with the idea of escape, whether a character escapes from New York back to her Kentucky childhood home or escapes a sour relationship. Although Hardwick claimed that she couldn’t write much ...

Pages: 405 Original date of publication: 2010 My edition: 2010 (Random House) Why I decided to read: it was offered as a part of the Amazon Vine program How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, November 2010 Clara and Mr. Tiffany tells the story of Clara Driscoll, the creative impetus behind the iconic Tiffany lamps. She was also the head of the women’s division at Tiffany Studios in the 1890s and 1900s, and had a close working relationship with Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. Clara Driscoll’s work made her more or less at the center of the Decorative Arts movement of the late 19 th century, although her work was never fully acknowledged in her lifetime (even today, we call them Tiffany Lamps, not Driscoll Lamps!). The story opens in 1893, when Clara, newly widowed, rejoins Tiffany Studios. The story follows her over the next fifteen years or so. The novel is the story of how Clara struggled to balance her love life with her work life (since married women were not perm...

Pages: 331 Original date of publication: 2010 My edition: 2010 (Henry Holt) Why I decided to read: it was offered on Amazon Vine How I acquired my copy: same, May 2010 Set in New York City in 1865, The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno is set amongst PT Barnum’s Museum of Human Curiosities. The story is narrated by Bartholomew Fortuno, the Museum’s Thin Man, who notices a strange woman entering the Museum late one night. His curiosity leads to an assignment from Barnum, who asks Bartholomew to shadow the mysterious woman. It’s a good premise, and I enjoyed the setting of the novel: I love reading novels set in historical New York, But the author’s writing style is uneven; sometime’s she’s erudite about the nature of Human Curiosities and their relationship with the rest of the world, but sometimes the writing is clunky (“Abigail something or another,” I said, remember only the poor girl’s first name”). There’s a heavy amount of foreshadowing in this novel, so m...

Harriet and Isabella is a novel about the relationship between Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister, Isabella Beecher Hooker. Set in 1870s and ‘80s Brooklyn, the story alternates between Henry Ward Beecher’s deathbed and the time when he was involved in a scandalous adultery case, in which he was accused of grossly immoral conduct and practicing free love. Harriet, the abolitionist, supported her brother, while Isabella, the suffragist, took the side of his accuser, Victoria Woodhull. As Beecher lies dying, Isabella comes back to Brooklyn to see if she can mend old wounds. In the back of the book, the author says that she went to Brooklyn and interviewed present-day members of Plymouth Church, to see what they thought of the Beecher scandal. While some members of the congregation thought that Beecher never had an affair, I’m with O’Brien in terms of wondering what really happened. And the author does a fine job in this novel of presenting both sides of the scandal. Isabella’s point of...

In the editorial reviews of this book at Amazon.com, the Washington Post says, "this little book isn't for everyone." I believe that maybe I'm one of those people this book wasn't meant for. But because I enjoy New York City history, I thought I'd give it a try. I enjoyed the idea for the book: Doctor Olaf Van Schuler arrives in New Amsterdam in the late 17th century, hounded from the old country after his less-than-salubrious activities become public knowledge. The rest of the book follows the Van Schuler/Steenwyck family through the generations in New York City, some of them doctors (and of these, many are quacks with some crazy ideas). Everything from hypnotism to lobotomy is practiced by the doctors in this short story collection, and I enjoyed watching the family's adventures as the generations progressed. However, I thought that it was really hard for me to get involved with any of the characters, especially since this book is essentially a series of...

Lucy Carelton belongs to one of the oldest and most prominent families in 1880s New York City, and her husband is a stockbroker, of “new” money, who clearly married her for the connections she brings him. Lucy’s a fairly typical example of a woman of her upbringing, except for the fact that she suffers from her nerves, and no doctor so far has been able to help her. Enter Dr. Victor Seth, who practices the up-and-coming trend of hypnosis to treat patients. The result is an exploration of the subconscious and Lucy’s sexual awakening that is quite startling in the questions it raises. A short while ago I read and reviewed another one of Megan Chance’s novels, The Spiritualist . There are some superficial similarities between the two books, but I enjoyed An Inconvenient Wife more. There’s a lot more depth to Lucy’s character, and Chance is adept at getting into her mindset, which I think might be hard for any author to do. Yes, there is a feminist overtone to this novel, but the author d...

One wintry evening in 1857, Evelyn Atherton allows her husband to convince her to attend a séance at the home of wealthy society lady Dorothy Bennett. When a gun misfires during the séance, Peter Atherton, a well-known lawyer and son of a wealthy New York family, determines to find out why. But soon after, Peter turns up dead, and Evelyn is the chief suspect. She then determines to find out who really killed her husband—and her suspicion immediately determines that Michel Jourdain, a famous medium, must be Peter’s killer. There were a few things about Chance’s portrayal of New York in the mid-19th century that bothered me a bit. First, I thought it was a little odd how the society matrons welcomed Evelyn, an outcast, into their midst, without question. Second, the author is maddeningly unspecific when it comes to details about the city in that period. Where on Fifth Avenue, for example, was Dorothy Bennett’ house? (my best guess is near Washington or Union Square, since the wealthy eli...

In 1909, Sigmund Freud paid his one and only visit to the US, when he went to accept an honorary award from Clark University. On his way to Massachusetts, he stopped briefly in New York. But not much is known about the visit, or why Freud vowed never to return. In this novel, Jed Rubenfeld tries to fill in the gaps. Accompanying Freud is Dr. Karl Jung; waiting at the pier in New York to greet them is Dr. Strathan Younger, a young doctor loosely connected with the wealthy elite of New York City. On the day after Freud’s arrival, a young woman is found murdered in a penthouse uptown. Later, another young woman, Nora Acton, is attacked, but she can remember nothing of the attack or her attacker. Freud uses his psychoanalytic powers to help solve the crime, with Dr. Younger at his side. Similar in scope to Caleb Carr’s The Alienist , The Interpretation of Murder focuses on the upper stratum of New York society, whereas The Alienist focuses on the poor and the seediest underbelly of New Y...

On June 25, 1906, wealthy millionaire Harry K. Thaw killed his wife’s Evelyn Nesbit’s, former lover, the famous architect Stanford White, at Madison Square Garden. Evelyn, age 20, had spent the past five or six years of her life in the public eye as a model in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York, but nothing could have prepared her for the publicity that occurred in the aftermath of the killing. American Eve is primarily about Evelyn’s life, and not quite so much about the murder and subsequent trial. Evelyn was born outside of Pittsburgh in 1885. After her father’s death, her mother tried to make ends meet by hiring Evelyn out as an artists’ model (as long as the artists were female or elderly men). Because of her timeless beauty, Evelyn soon found herself modeling in Philadelphia and New York, where she met much-older Stanford White, who set himself up as her father-figure and protector. Soon, however, he became much more. Evelyn met her future husband Harry K. Thaw “of Pittsburg...

In The Island at the Center of the World , Russell Shorto narrates the forgotten story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, which covered what is now New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and a bit of Pennsylvania; and the town of New Amsterdam specifically. Beginning with the day that Henry Hudson sailed up the river that was later named after him (almost exactly 400 years ago to the day), to the sale of New Amsterdam to the English, this book is a social and political history covering the story of the early modern world. We meet a number of 17th century characters: Adriaen Van der Donck, the lawyer (for whom Yonkers, NY is named, after “jonker,” or landed gentleman, which Van der Donck styled himself as); Peter Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam’s peglegged governor; and Willem Kieft, the governor who was accused of mismanagement. In this book, Shorto, who draws from documents being translated by Charles Gehring at the New York State Library in Albany, dispels the myth that colonial America began...

Franny and Zooey is a short book. In fact, it was originally published as two short stories in the New Yorker—“Franny” in 1955 and “Zooey” in 1957, and then published together in 1961. Franny and Zooey Glass are brother and sister—Franny’s a 20-year old college student having a “nervous breakdown” as she explores Eastern religion, and Zooey’s a 25-year-old actor who still lives at home. Bookending the two is the rest of the Glass family: the five other children, who we never met, and Mrs. Glass, who talks in italics . Salinger wasn’t one for “action,” per se—there’s a lot of saying, but not doing, in his novels. He tends to over-describe things—he even lists the entire contents of a medicine cabinet. Sometimes this can get long-winded and pointless, and it was easy for me to see why Catcher in the Rye overshadows this book. Franny and Zooey explore religion to a great extent in these stories, and their philosophizing went over my head in places. The dialogue is neurotic at times and ...

84, Charing Cross Road is a delightful collection of letters chronicling the 20-plus years’ correspondence between screenwriter Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, bookseller of Marks & Co. It begins with a request in which Helene inquires after a series of books she wants to buy, saying that Barnes & Nobles’s sells “marked up, grimy schoolboy” copies of the books she wants (my, how things have changed!), and continues through a friendship between Hanff and Doel in which the two never meet. As their lives grow and change, Hanff and Doel’s friendship remains the one constant. It’s a special friendship, and Hanff is sharp-tongued and witty, making her a delightful narrator. I have a feeling that not all of the letters are preserved here in their entirety, but they’re reprinted word-for-word, including Hanff’s idiosyncratic punctuation—no doubt due to the fact that she typewrote all of her letters, but nonetheless, the letters show Hanff’s personality and her rather abrupt way of corres...

I'm on the fence about whether or not I like this book. Claire Truman is a rising young editor at a major publishing house with a wonderful boss and mentor. When Jackson decides to leave, Claire leaves and becomes an editor at Grant Books, under the infamously awful Vivian Grant, known for terrorizing her employees. Claire is a hard worker, but she always gets torn down in front of her colleagues for no apparent reason. I didn't know whether to like this book or dismiss it as another peice of "I hate my boss" chick lit. Vivian seems like a caricature at times, and Randall, Claire's boyfriend, seems almost too perfect. I mean, he's a good looking, kind, and thoughtful investment banker, what's not to love? Seriously, I was rolling my eyes. Also, I thought it was completely unrealistic that someone living on Claire's salary lives on Christopher Street in the West Village. Although the book escapes other cliches (the crazy mother, the gay boyfriend), Clai...

Metropolis is set in the New York of the 1860s and `70s, as the United States was making its transition into a global power. You wouldn't know this from this book however, as Metropolis centers itself on the underworld of New York--specifically the crime of the Five Points area of the Lower East Side. Featuring a complicated hero who isn't always easy to "make out," our hero is called by many names but most often Frank Harris. Coerced into the Whyo gang, lead by the ruthless "Dandy" Johnny Dolan and his mother, Harris finds himself falling in love with Beatrice, also a member of the gang. Its clear that Elizabeth Gaffney has done her research and knows whereof she speaks. It helps that she's a Brooklyn native and describes the Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan down to the smallest detail. Her characters are intriguing, and the way Gaffney writes makes me want to do more reading on the gangs of the period (indeed, Gaffney drew a lot of her source material from...

I was Told There’d Be Cake is a series of essays by sometimes-contributor to the Village Voice Sloane Crosley. There are fifteen essays total, and they cover typical twenty-something subjects, such as moving into a new walkup apartment in New York City (not as easy as it would appear), attending the wedding of every girl you knew in high school that you’d forgotten about (been there, done that), a semidysfunctional family (her family IS my family), and a satanic first boss. Sloane Crosley tells these stories with humor and insight and she has a truly unique voice. But there were also times where I found myself thinking, “I think the same way!” Or, “I wish I’d thought of that!” It’s a completely honest, open kind of storytelling, one that you don’t see in many writers of today. Being a twenty-something myself, I could completely empathize with this book—made even better if you understand the cultural references (Oregon Trail, anyone?) This book is a complete gem, and my new bible. Also...

Lush Life is the story of Eric Cash, a thirty-something guy living on the Lower East Side, in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Early one morning, a bartender ends up dead, and Cash, an inveterate liar, finds himself the center of a murder investigation by Matty Clark. The world that Price describes in this book is not the Yuppie New York that most people hear about (or most New Yorkers have experienced), and I loved the gritty and grim way in which Price depicts Cash's world. The author uses short, terse sentences that can be confusing at times, but are ultimately lyrical. For example, he could have said, "he muttered," but instead he says, "...went off somewhere behind his teeth." The dialogue is written in the way people speak, which makes this book all the more realistic. While Lush Life might not be to everyone's taste, this novel is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It's a novel about the city I know and love so we...

The Queen of Bedlam is an intriguing, thoughtful novel about the underworld of New York in the early eighteenth century. Matthew Corbett, the magistrate’s clerk to whom we were introduced in Speaks the Nightbird, returns, this time to solve the murders of three of New York’s citizens: a wealthy business owner, an orphanage owner who Matthew was acquainted with in a previous life, and a doctor. It turns out that the murders are just the simplest link in a series of mysteries and crimes that began years ago in England; one of the mysteries include a mute woman in an asylum whose identity is unknown, but simply called the Queen of Bedlam. The character of Matthew has been strengthened in this novel. The reader definitely got to see more of what made him tick, though I think Matthew got over his anger at Eben Ausley a little too quickly. At times Matthew has a wicked sense of humor, and it definitely came out more in The Queen of Bedlam . I was interested in McCammon’s descriptions of ea...

Heyday follows the story of four young Americans during the tumultuous years of 1848-9. The novel opens in Paris in February 1948, when the aristocratic Englishman Ben Knowles witnesses an uprising. Eventually, he escapes to the United States, where he quickly befriends Polly and Duff Lucking, and Timothy Skaggs. They’re each of them unique, quirky characters, and I enjoyed reading about them as they make a transcontinental voyage to California followed by a Frenchman in search of vengeance. It’s a journey that’s at once exciting and full of danger. I had mixed feelings about Heyday . I’ve been reading reviews about the book on Amazon.com, and my grumblings about the novel are pretty much the same as theirs are. The four main characters become involved—accidentally or no—with nearly every moment of historical significance in 1848 and -9. However, despite all the change that surrounds them, Ben, Polly, Duff, and Skaggs don’t really seem to change that much themselves. I like to see cha...

A Pickpocket's Tale is a close, intimate look inside of New York's underworld in the nineteenth century. Ostensibly about one criminal, the half Chinese, half Irish George Appo, the book is more a sociological work about the institutions of crime and punishment as they existed then. Born in poverty in 1856 (or -8), Appo began as a newspaper boy, then graduated to the career of pickpocket. He served time in all kinds of detention centers, from Sing Sing to Eastern State Pen in Philadelphia, to a stint on Blackwell's (now Roosevelt) Island, to a short period in the Matteawan Hospital. The book gives its reader an in-depth look at everything from street crime in the Five Points district up to Appo's short-lived careers in acting and law enforcement. Appo was an obscure figure who was given a one-sentence mention in Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of New York, but Appo really was an archetype of his time and situation. What was amazing to me was that, even though he was nea...