Saturday, November 3, 2018

Alternate Side

After reading two memoirs in a row, and a non-fiction book before that, I was in the mood for a good novel. Browsing the shelves on Overdrive, the title Alternate Side jumped off the screen at me. Upon closer examination, I saw that Anna Quindlen, an author I've enjoyed in the past, had written it. Borrow. Checkout. Download. It was on my bookshelf.

In case you're not familiar with alternate side of the street parking, it's a huge deal in New York City. On most streets, once or twice a week, you have to move your car from one side of the street to the other (good luck with that) so the street cleaners can come thru. In my opinion, the streets rarely look any better after this cursory cleaning. But who knows what they would look like if the sweepers never came thru. I frequently speak to my son (who lives in Brooklyn) on the phone as he's doing the alternate side parking dance. I left NYC as a young adult, had to deal with the whole alternate side thing when I was up in Brooklyn caring for my dad a few years ago. It quite often brought me to tears. It made me swear that if were ever to live in New York City that I wouldn't own a car.

Alternate side of the street parking doesn't really factor into this novel by Anna Quindlen much at all. But aspiring to get a parking spot in a private lot on the dead-end block where Nora and Charlie live does play a huge role. And what happens in the parking lot is the climax of the plot.

Alternate Side is about Nora's love affair with "the city." Nora's daughter, Rachel, is in college in New England. She brought up the fact that New Yorkers call Manhattan "the city" as if it's the only city in the world. And it's not. Yet Nora loves New York City, even as she acknowledges things about it that are not so lovable. Although she keeps those things to herself. Why? Because Alternate Side is about Charlie's desire to leave New York City and to live somewhere else. He's got a list of grievances a mile long and Nora didn't want to give him more reason to want to leave New York.

Rachel, when talking about her father and the places he'd like to move to, says, "I also think if you move to the places he's talking about moving you'll scarcely see me because why would I go there?" O-U-C-H! Is that how my children and stepchildren feel?

I left New York City shortly before the time Nora moved to Manhattan as a young college graduate. She loved it for all the reasons that I fled. And she stayed because of those reasons, and because in the interim, New York City became a much more pleasant place to live, as long as you had the money. She and Charlie had the money.

Most of the people that Nora knew were transplants like herself and Charlie, who moved into the city as young adults because that was the place to be to succeed. But her kids, her kids were able to say that they were born in New York City!

"You should get her mac-and-cheese recipe, Mom," Ollie had said once.
"Oh, my goodness, honey, that whole party is catered."
"Really?" Rachel said."It doesn't feel like it is." Which was perhaps the nicest thing a born-and-raised Manhattan child could say about a meal.
Nora and Charlie lived on a dead-end street with mostly old Victorian houses. Their house had been owned for almost ninety years by a single family. (Did I ever tell you that the family house I sold last December was my family's home from 1935 until 2014?) Some of the folks on Nora and Charlie's block still called their house The Taylor House, even though Nora and Charlie Nolan had lived there for many years.

Other themes explored in the novel are neighborhood dynamics, professional ambition, marriage, motherhood, friendship. Be sure, these are no less important than Nora's love affair with New York City. And these are universal themes But after reading reviews on goodreads, I do believe that you have to be very, very familiar with New York City, what you sacrifice and what you gain, in order to find the book realistic at all.Taken out of New York City, most of the characters are one-dimensional, but within the context of the city, they seem much more full-faceted.

I would not recommend this latest from Anna Quindlen to most. But I have recommended it to a certain friend. And I can't wait to hear what she has to say about it.

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