Just when I’d decided to read a bit less, another virus wallops me with a major sore throat and stuffy head. This is getting a little ridiculous. I guess it’s payback for feeling so physically robust last year. All I’ve been able to do these past few days is down a lot of medicines and lie in bed surrounded by books. One of the happy consequences of taking care of husband, six-year-old and border collie is that when I go down, I am cared for in return, with lots of sympathy, understanding, small loving pats on the head, and numerous inquiries as to whether I need anything—popscicles? Kleenex? cool water? a juicy bone?
So, surrounded by four or five books, all of them going simultaneously, depending on what was at hand, I read without guilt. One of the books I tackled was Cheryl Mendelson’s Morningside Heights, which deals with the changing fortunes of the inhabitants of this venerable New York neighborhood (fascinating website). I thought a book about the intimate domestic lives of privileged, but romantically messed-up and/or financially-strapped Manhattanites, might be one way to squeeze a little enjoyment out of my misery, though reading the thing was not without a little misery of its own.
Ay, caramba, what a dense book—dense in description, detail, vocabulary, dialogue—and yet, the main storyline seemed childish and simplistic. It reminded me of a Pollyannish little childhood fantasy I used to have in which a crotchety, lonely rich old lady would take a fancy to me and bequeath me her fortune. (spoiler alert: avoid next sentence if you plan to read the book.) This is not to say that rich old ladies in New York never take a sympathetic fancy to kindly stay-at-home mothers across the hall who are being forced out of their apartment by economic tides, but I think it would have been a more interesting book if fate hadn’t been so conveniently generous, if the family had been forced to relocate in the suburbs, and if it gone on to describe how they fared in their new environs.
But, that’s not the book Mendelson wanted to write and I generally hate criticism that deals with "ifs" so I'm not sure why I just indulged in it.
Anyway, according to the jacket cover, Morningside Heights is the first in a trilogy, and that plan impresses me, since this first volume is such a hefty piece of work. I admit to reading it impatiently, skimming and skipping vast paragraphs of relentless legal and academic detail, but finding myself engrossed all the same. I guess I would recommend it, as they say, with reservations, for the glimpse into an alien urban neighborhood that seemed appealing with its bakeries, greengrocers, museums, booksellers and churches--and not a mega mall in site.
11:01:45 PM 
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