Tag Archives: New York Woman

The Midwife by Gay Courter

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
The tale of a Russian midwife who emigrates to America during the pogroms of the early 1900s.

Review:
The Midwife was a completely satisfying reading experience, not just because the plot and characters were so engaging, but because I loved the author’s perspective on birth. It’s as if Ina May Gaskin were writing historical fiction–it’s so rare to see birth treated like a normal event, not an emergency. I am not a birth junkie but I did have both my kids at home and loved my midwives so much, and it was great to read a book that portrayed the special heroism of midwives who believe that birth can happen at home.

The story itself is gripping. Hannah is training in Moscow when restrictions against Jews begin to tighten, so she travels on a harrowing train ride back to her home in St. Petersburg, where the violence becomes personal. She and her family decide to flee, at great personal and financial cost, and settle on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. NYC at the turn of the 20th Century is one of my favorite fictional settings, and I just ate up the perspective on Jewish culture and society, from least to greatest. There’s a romance element that really worked for me because it felt grounded in emotional truth. Loved it!

Healing Paradise by Gay Courter

Posted on by
3

Synopsis:
As WWII encroaches, Rozy braves judgment and trials, both personal and professional, to be one of only 4 women in her class at Cornell Medical School, finding passion for her work and a love that may not survive the rigors of her life as a doctor.

Review:
In Healing Paradise, Gay Courter has done a great job developing a most fascinating world, that of medical school in the late 1930s/early 1940s. I loved seeing the inner workings of medical school, and the ways in which Rozy and her friends fought against the institutionalized sexism they encountered. I also loved watching her romance with fellow med student Alexander develop, with the requisite challenging family dynamics being especially stressful.

What I appreciated about this book was how straightforward it was. Courter is aiming to tell a good story and gets out of the way admirably. And those are the books I enjoy the most, where I can just get lost in the story and not be distracted by clever wordplay or overblown literary ambitions.

Rozy decides to pursue pediatrics, and I found this particularly fascinating as a volunteer breastfeeding counselor. I’ve done some training in NICU protocol and so I really enjoyed seeing a glimpse into the way premature babies were cared for in the past. I shuddered when one doctor says he doesn’t feed preemies for a few days because they can’t handle it, and then cheered Rozy for refusing to agree with this bit of idiocy. I’m so used to reading books and watching TV shows that portray a medicalized view of pregnancy, birth, and the newborn phase as normal that it was refreshing to meet a character who was ahead of her time and following common sense about what babies need.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A coming of age story about a girl growing up in Williamsburg in the first half of the 20th Century.

Review:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of the most wonderful books of all time. It’s almost too perfect in its humor, poignancy, and wisdom. I’ve read it countless times since I was a bookish kid like Francie Nolan, wishing I could buy penny candy and sleep in the front room on a cool fall night. My heart broke for her all over again watching Johnny’s descent, and this time I found myself admiring Katie’s strength and dignity. Plus now that I know Williamsburg better it’s fun to know that my kids have played in the same park that Francie once did.

This time around I listened to the audio version, narrated by Kate Burton, who gave Francie the most wonderful Brooklyn accent I’ve ever heard. Top notch production.

Enchanted, Inc by Shanna Swendson (Katie Chandler, Book 1)

Posted on by
1

Synopsis:
An ordinary New York City girl gets recruited by a magical agency precisely because she is immune to magic.

Review:
Cute, light, and fun, Enchanted, Inc. was exactly the palate cleanser I needed after gorging on A Dance With Dragons. I especially loved that Shanna Swendson didn’t feel the need to make Katie klutzy or ditsy. She wasn’t afraid to have Katie be outspoken and assertive. She was my kind of girl and I really enjoyed spending time in her head.

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Upper East Side bond trader mows down Bronx “honor student” and New York City freaks out.

Review:
Oh, how I love Bonfire of the Vanities! I have read it several times, most memorably rereading it in the first month after I moved to New York City, way back in 1995. I don’t know that I could ever tire of reading it, because I’m always astonished by how deep Wolfe takes you into every single little nuance of the story. And it’s funny how the small details are what always stick with me most: brown lipstick, packing peanuts, Bruckner Boulevard, the little tap and the boy goes down.

This time around I enjoyed, might I say heartily so, the audiobook version. And what struck me this time is how often Wolfe turns his characters into tour guides, in order to show off how much he knows about abso-freaking-everything. Sherman has inner monologues about the greatness of Wall Street. Killian tells Sherman all about how the courts work. Abe Weiss explains Bronx politics to Larry Kramer. The narrator explains women’s fashion. I could go on but then I’d just be rewriting the book for you. And it’s all so fascinating, even the stuff that is outdated.

The narrator of the audiobook, Joe Barrett, is quite possibly the greatest actor of all time, giving voice to scores of characters and making them all original and distinct. And he does a better job with Maria Ruskin than Melanie Griffith in the atrocious movie version.

I have read everything Tom Wolfe has ever written and nothing can ever compare to this book, which is one of my all-time favorites. I can’t wait to read it again!

Prospect Park West by Amy Sohn

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
MILFs in Brooklyn!

Review:
Amy Sohn is a writer who’s been on my radar since I first moved to New York City in 1995, and it’s like she’s lived the public, more successful version of my life. Her single girl escapades got published in the New York Press; I was an escapading single girl who read the Press every week. She wrote a novel loosely based on her own life that got turned into a movie; I do movie adaptations of books whose writers get all the attention. And now, she’s a freelance writer and mom living in tony Park Slope, Brooklyn, the #1 most livable neighborhood in New York City. I am a freelance writer and mom living in Long Island City, Queens, which ranks an embarrassing #16 (though I do grocery shop and playground hop in Sunnyside, which was the dark horse #3).

Now, having read Prospect Park West, I can finally liberate myself from at least one-half of the Amy Sohn-envy that has tinged my professional life. Success I want, sure–but at least now I have definitive evidence that momming in Queens trumps momming in Brooklyn any day.

My mom friends in Park Slope have confirmed that a lot of Sohn’s scathing mommy wars satire hits it right on the mark. We don’t get near the amount of drama and hilarity on Sunnymoms as they do on Park Slope Parents. We don’t have a sanctimonious food coop (though on is in the planning stages). With only 3 playgrounds, one dominated by weightlifters and drunks, and a smaller total area, it’s a lot easier to make friends in my neighborhood than it is in theirs. Bonus–no celebrities!

The book does go over-the-top. Like any good roman à clef, it’s got enough real life to make it authentic, and then goes completely nuts with sex and booze and drama galore. I loved it!

Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Hired to teach at a secluded, artsy boarding school, a young widow discovers that mystery and murder roil below the bucolic surface.

Review:
I wanted to adore Arcadia Falls, but I only got about 80% there.

I loved the atmosphere that Carol Goodman created for Arcadia, the creepy boarding school in the middle of the woods in upstate New York. The backstory was most excellent, starting with a 1920s artists’ colony founded by two lesbians, one deeply conflicted and not entirely committed to Team Pink. For the most part, I was totally sucked into the story, eagerly turning the pages to get to the next scene.

However, the few missteps that I ignored at the beginning started to pile up so that by the end I had lost faith in the story’s ability to give me a transcendent experience. A few cardboard characters here, some overly expository dialogue there, added finally with an unfortunately predictable endgame led ultimately to disappointment for me.

Many thanks to Ballantine Books for the review copy.

Cooking For Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser

Posted on by
2

Synopsis:
A food writer tells her own love story through vignettes of the wonderful meals she had during her courtship and engagement with a man who nearly lost her by putting Equal in his latte.

Review:
Amanda Hesser is so charming! Cooking for Mr. Latte was both romantic and mouthwatering, filled with funny, honest, and delightful anecdotes about food, dining, relationships, and love. Each chapter offers recipes that seem accessible and sound absolutely delicious. You bet I will be making her Kadjemoula (North African Lamb and Beef Stew) once the fall weather hits–I plan to adapt it to my slow cooker. Oh yum.

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (The Dark Tower)

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
The gunslinger steps into the lives of three different New Yorkers, and must figure out how they fit into his quest before he dies of an infection.

Review:
The contrast between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three always astonishes me. As King puts it in his introduction, in book 2 of the Dark Tower series the story really takes off. I always spend the first few chapters mourning the elegiac tone of the first book, but soon am swept away by the power of King’s characterizations.

Eddie’s story always gets me, mostly because of the subtle poignancy of his relationship with his older brother Henry, the “great sage and eminent junkie.” Couple that with a drug deal plotline that takes Scarface to a supernatural plane and I just devour the first huge chunk of The Drawing of the Three. The shootout at Balazar’s is one of King’s finest sequences, expertly plotted and staged and visualized.

I slow down a bit when I get to Odetta/Detta, because King takes Detta to such an odious place that I need to look away. I can’t get too close to her. And because I know Jake is coming (though not until the next book), I end up rushing through the Jack Mort stuff. I love watching Roland work Jack Mort, giving the first hint of the diplomat that we’ll find in later books, but knowing that we’re not going to stay with Jack keeps me from getting too invested in that chunk. Reading it now, knowing the ending, I’m struck by how little of the Jack Mort stuff ends up figuring into the larger mythology. He’s pretty much just a plot device at best, filler at worst, a way for King to take a long time getting where he intends to go. I wouldn’t advocate cutting it, but I do wonder how those scenes would’ve played out had they been written closer together with the later books.

The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
When novelist Kendall Ames is dropped by her publisher and her husband, she faces a case of writer’s block so severe that her best friends–also novelists–decide to help her writer her next novel and let her take all the credit.

Review:
I’m a sucker for novels about writers, because they always get me off my butt and working on my own stuff. And of course I like good chick lit, so I was primed to enjoy The Accidental Bestseller.

The plot was a strange one. Basically, Kendall fails as a novelist so her friends help her write a book about a failed novelist whose friends help her write a book. The plot of the book within the book was never specified, thankfully sparing me from too much of a hall of mirrors effect. I wasn’t sure it would work as well as it did, but Wendy Wax pulled it off.

The Accidental Bestseller wears its influences well, from The Devil Wears Prada to Olivia Goldsmith, while retaining a charm uniquely its own. Wax packed a lot of enjoyable drama into her characters but avoided seeming too soap opera-ish. At times I wished it had pushed things a bit farther (a la Goldsmith), but by the time the ending rolled around I was more than satisfied. I hope that Wax is planning more stories with these characters, because I definitely would spend more time with them.