Most helpful customer reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
easy summer read, Jul 26 2009
well written, inoffensive, a good summer read. If you are fascinated by New York, wonder about the people who live there with their dogs, then this is the book for you. Picked it up when I saw a review in More magazine. Wasn't disappointed.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
INVENTIVE, SOPHISTICATED AND WITTY, May 1 2007
"New York, New York, It's a wonderful town!" Composers sing New York's praises, poets rhyme its virtues, diarists trace adventures there, and authors set tales in this iconic city. Cathleen Schine, author of The Love Letter, has written another billet-doux with The New Yorkers, a brilliant, comic take on one city block in Manhattan and those who live there.
Said block is just a short stroll from Central Park which, of course, made it a favorite of dog owners and professional dog walkers. "...so the street, not distinguished by great beauty to begin with, was not terribly clean either. And yet, it was the loveliest street I have ever lived on. And the most interesting."
It is, indeed, the most interesting as it is home to school teachers, eccentrics the retired, up-and-coming wannabes, the homeless, and all manner of outre characters, each drawn with perception and precision by this accomplished author.
Jody, known by her colleagues as "Good Old Jody," has lived in her studio apartment for 20 years. It is there that she endures sleepless nights then greets the day with a smile. A spinster, as she sometimes thinks of herself, she decides to get a cat. However, when she visits the ASPCA she finds an aged pit bull mix who had been found somewhere in the Bronx. A female, the dog is huge with a great lolling tongue and Jody names her Beatrice.
On a particularly cold, icy day Jody is walking Beatrice when she sees Everett, another block dweller. He is a man of 50, divorced, bored, depressed, despite Prozac, but possessed of a stunning smile. Jody immediately falls in love, and takes to daily walks with the bow legged Beatrice past Everett's door.
Polly is a young woman who, as a child was awed by the sound of her own voice. She is pretty, demanding and suffering from a love affair gone terribly wrong. She moves onto the block when she discovers an abandoned puppy in an apartment closet. It's not long before her brother, George, shares the apartment with her and the puppy, now known as Howdy.
"George, twenty-eight years old, had been a child prodigy. No one knew it. Except George." When we meet him he still has not discovered his exact area of expertise.
Then, there is Simon, who lives in a ground floor one bedroom apartment. He is 48, and takes the subway to work every day, where he labors as "an asocial social worker in the far-off fields of Riverdale and carried a briefcase swollen with files pertaining to those whom he thought of as the unfortunate, the unhappy, and the unkempt."
There are more characters, of course, each finely painted, all memorable, and very human. As the days pass the lives of these people intersect in different ways, and we are privy to their thoughts and aspirations, their successes and their failures.
The New Yorkers is fun, sophisticated, revealing. Cathleen Schine tells a doggone good story - don't miss it!
- Gail Cooke
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