Anna Quindlen's Alternate Side popped out at me because I both enjoy the author's work and the premise of a sinister event taking over a neighborhood block interested me.
Nora Nolan has lived on the same block for a decade and a half, and her children are now off to college. Her husband constantly wants to leave the city but she is a New Yorker down to her bones. They could sell their home for a pretty penny, but they have a hamlet in Manhattan that cushions them from the outside world while providing a sense of calm in the midst of the New York City storm. Everyone knows each other, even if they don't necessarily like each other, and life is good in stasis. That is, until an act of violence shatters their neighborhood milieu and pits neighbor against neighbor in a fight in who is right, who is wrong, and who can forget the actions of others.
Being a New Yorker while reading a book where New York is a character in the story is always an interesting phenomenon. On one hand, I can relate totally to all of the characters in different ways, while at the same time being completely jealous of fictional characters who had the good sense to purchase a home on a developing block early enough that they could have a brownstone. (Yeah -- I absolutely have property envy of fictional characters and I'm not ashamed to admit it.) I found that each of these characters portrayed in this book are people I have either known or run into in my decade plus here in the city -- the New Yorker down to her bones, the man who can't wait to move out of the city, the annoying neighbor who feels he owns the block, the older woman across the street who has more class in her pinkie than anyone else has in their whole bodies combined. I even knew Ricky, the handyman with a good heart and a life that no one cares to get to know. Quindlen has a knack for creating characters with full and intriguing arcs, and that was definitely a highlight in this novel.
I found this book to be quite a good read if a bit repetitive at times. By the middle of the book you get that Nora has always dreamed of living in NYC and nowhere else, and by the third or fourth time I read that missive, I wanted to yell, "I KNOW THAT NORA BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I AM TWO DECADES YOUNGER THAN YOU AND GOT OVER IT YOU CAN TOO." The build up to the violent act that rocks the neighborhood was a little overwrought; I was expecting something a bit bigger than what actually happened. I'm not discounting the events, because what happened has a lot of classist and racist undertones and is a hot topic in 2018, but I was expecting something more murder and mayhem-y in the way the blurbs were set up.
This was a lovely read that was thoughtful in so many ways. One thing I have been thinking on for days after finishing the book is marriage, love, and why we choose our partners. A marriage's demise is always due to many factors, and there is no explaining how one couple can stay together when they seem to be either one or two horrible people and another couple can fall apart when they seem so right for each other. The big theme that came out of this book is that marriages aren't always what they seem, and they serve different purposes for different people. It was an interesting and thoughtful theme, and well worth contemplating long after finishing this book.
Nora Nolan has lived on the same block for a decade and a half, and her children are now off to college. Her husband constantly wants to leave the city but she is a New Yorker down to her bones. They could sell their home for a pretty penny, but they have a hamlet in Manhattan that cushions them from the outside world while providing a sense of calm in the midst of the New York City storm. Everyone knows each other, even if they don't necessarily like each other, and life is good in stasis. That is, until an act of violence shatters their neighborhood milieu and pits neighbor against neighbor in a fight in who is right, who is wrong, and who can forget the actions of others.
Being a New Yorker while reading a book where New York is a character in the story is always an interesting phenomenon. On one hand, I can relate totally to all of the characters in different ways, while at the same time being completely jealous of fictional characters who had the good sense to purchase a home on a developing block early enough that they could have a brownstone. (Yeah -- I absolutely have property envy of fictional characters and I'm not ashamed to admit it.) I found that each of these characters portrayed in this book are people I have either known or run into in my decade plus here in the city -- the New Yorker down to her bones, the man who can't wait to move out of the city, the annoying neighbor who feels he owns the block, the older woman across the street who has more class in her pinkie than anyone else has in their whole bodies combined. I even knew Ricky, the handyman with a good heart and a life that no one cares to get to know. Quindlen has a knack for creating characters with full and intriguing arcs, and that was definitely a highlight in this novel.
I found this book to be quite a good read if a bit repetitive at times. By the middle of the book you get that Nora has always dreamed of living in NYC and nowhere else, and by the third or fourth time I read that missive, I wanted to yell, "I KNOW THAT NORA BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I AM TWO DECADES YOUNGER THAN YOU AND GOT OVER IT YOU CAN TOO." The build up to the violent act that rocks the neighborhood was a little overwrought; I was expecting something a bit bigger than what actually happened. I'm not discounting the events, because what happened has a lot of classist and racist undertones and is a hot topic in 2018, but I was expecting something more murder and mayhem-y in the way the blurbs were set up.
This was a lovely read that was thoughtful in so many ways. One thing I have been thinking on for days after finishing the book is marriage, love, and why we choose our partners. A marriage's demise is always due to many factors, and there is no explaining how one couple can stay together when they seem to be either one or two horrible people and another couple can fall apart when they seem so right for each other. The big theme that came out of this book is that marriages aren't always what they seem, and they serve different purposes for different people. It was an interesting and thoughtful theme, and well worth contemplating long after finishing this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment