Given I’m limiting my air travel, I suspect my single visit to New York City will be my first and last. Perhaps that’s the reason I’m drawn to travel there through fiction. Below are five novels that transport readers through time as well as distance, all with links to reviews on this blog.
Jonathan Lee’s The Great Mistake is the reimagining of the life of Andrew Haswell Green, largely forgotten despite being credited as ‘The Father of Greater New York’ during his lifetime, murdered aged eighty-three on the steps of his home in 1903. Green’s friendship with Samuel Tilden opened up opportunities unthinkable to the son of a drunkard farmer, and also the way to heartache. By the end of his long career, conducted up until the time of his murder, Green had been the driving force behind many of New York’s landmark institutions, from Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Brooklyn Bridge, but his only memorial appears to be a bench tucked away in Central Park. Lee sets about rescuing his subject from obscurity with a touching tenderness for this man who died childless and unmarried, unable to celebrate his relationship with the love of his life as anything but friendship.
Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn is the story of a teenage girl in the ‘70s which unfolds when a chance meeting after her father’s funeral catapults
August back into her past. She and her little brother had watched the goings-on in the street from their apartment window in the tough Brooklyn neighbourhood their father had brought them to from Tennessee. One day, August sees three girls laughing on the summer streets. and longs to be a part of their group. Smart, beautiful Sylvia welcomes August into her friendship with Gigi and Angela. These four form an alliance against the world until cracks begin to form. By the time of the funeral, August is successful but no longer in touch with the friends who had meant so much to her. A gorgeous book – deeply moving, peopled with vividly drawn characters and beautifully expressed.
Molly Prentiss’ debut Tuesday Nights in 1980 begins on New Year’s Eve. Parties are being held all over New York. At one, 
thrown by a doyenne of the New York art world, James, an art critic who experiences the world in a multitude of trippy sensations and colours, is in attendance with his pregnant wife, Marge. He catches a glimpse of Raul and is momentarily distracted. Raul takes himself off to a bar where he meets Lucy, new to the city, persuading her to come back with him to his squat where a much more uproarious party is in full swing. It’s a fateful night for all of them: Marge suffers an accident; Lucy falls in love; James’ fleeting sight of Raul is the last time his synaesthesia registers. Prentiss’ novel hinges on fate and coincidence as her characters’ paths criss-cross the novel. All of this unfolds against a backdrop of 1980s New York City – gritty, grubby and considerably more edgy pre-cleanup. Not without flaws, it’s an entertaining, absorbing read.
Set in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Joseph Cassara’s The House of Impossible Beauties was inspired by Paris is Burning, a documentary
about Harlem’s drag ball scene. It focuses on four character – Angel and Venus who are trans, and Juanito and Daniel who are not. All of them are runaways. Together they make up the House of Xtravaganza, the first Latino house on the drag ball circuit and a place of sanctuary from a harsh world. The strength of Cassara’s novel lies his portrayal of these four: Angel buries the pain of losing the love of her life, channelling it into a fierce protectiveness; Venus falls into the trap of thinking she’s found her man only to discover he’s married; the delicately beautiful Juanito whose childhood still haunts him finds love with the adoring Daniel. AIDs is the grim backdrop to this novel, loss and sadness always present together with the straight world’s prejudice and ignorance, but there’s a thread of humour running through it, lightening its tone.
Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved remains one of my all-time favourite novels. Art historian Leo Hertzberg looks back on his long friendship with Bill Weschler whose work he first discovered in a New York gallery when Bill was a complete unknown. So impressed is Leo with Bill’s work that he tracks him down and their lives become entangled. The novel is the story of their intense relationship, of the women they live with, their work and their sons both born the same year but whose lives take very different turns. Hustvedt’s writing has an extraordinary depth. Her descriptions of Bill’s work are wonderfully vivid. She brings to it an art historian’s training coupled with superb descriptive skill, and her themes are all-encompassing: art, love, family, friendship, work – life. If you haven’t read it yet, please do.
Any novels with a New York backdrop you’d like to add to my list?
If you’d like to explore more posts like this, including my first New York post, I’ve listed them here.
Thanks for this. I particularly like the sound of the last one and will order it.
So pleased to hear that. Hope you love it as much as I do.
New York is the best American city for novels! I’ve not read any of this batch, but am drawn very much to the Woodson and Prentiss.
Closely rivalled by Berlin, for me. I loved the Woodson and the Prentiss is fun.
I actually bought What I loved on your recommendation a couple of years ago, but STILL haven’t got around to reading it. I am awful!
Ha! I suspect we’re all guilty of that kind of thing. You’ve a treat in store, anyway.
Three here I really liked Susan, the Prentiss, which I think I bought on your recommendation, Hustvedt and Cassara. I am such a sucker for a New York setting!
Me, too, Cathy. Delighted to hear all three of those hit the spot.
Books are certainly a great way to travel, almost as good (at times, better) than the real thing! The Great Mistake and What I loved from your list are likely to end up on my own 🙂
Much easier, for sure! Pleased these two have caught your eye, particularly the Husvedt.
What I Loved was one of those rare books that everybody in my book group LOVED (that almost never happens with us). It’s also one of those rare books that I plan to reread.
Oh, that’s great to hear. I’ve reread it not once but twice (very rare for me) and I still love it.
NYC was a single daytrip for me so far, though it’s likely that I’ll squeeze in more visits when back to see family. Loved the Hustvedt — like so many, I read it on your recommendation. I have the Woodson out from the library now and will hope to get to it before the end of Novellas in November.
So pleased to hear you loved the Husvedt. It has so much to say about so many things and says them so elegantly. Hope you enjoy the Woodson, too.
I’ve never been to America and have no particular wish to visit the place but I did enjoy The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen which is set in NYC
Thanks for the recommendation, Jackie. I’m not keen to go back in the current climate but I loved what I saw of New York, and the landscape in the South West is spectacular.
I haven’t read any of these but I should follow your lead and think about my own reading and their cities, it’s such a good idea!
Thank you! I like reading fiction set in cities I’ve enjoyed visiting. It’s a little trip back.
I haven’t read any of the books on your list. I tend to like books from the past set I’m the New York of bygone days. Edith Wharton novels, The Great Gatsby, for a start, then things like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Ann Petry’s The Street. Great idea for a post.
Thanks you. I love Edith Wharton, much more to my taste than Henry James. And I’d forgotten all about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Thanks for reminding me.
What I Loved has been languishing in my TBR for ages – I really must get to it. All of these sound very tempting – I’m drawn to the Cassara as I liked the TV series Pose a lot, and Paris is Burning is really powerful.
Oh, you must! I’m sure you’d like the Cassara if you rated Paris is Burning. Pose is on my watchlist.