The Falconer by Dana Czapnik

Sometimes a book finds me that I would not have found by myself. That is how The Falconer by Dana Czapnik came into my life--as an unexpected package from the publisher.

Reading it was about a seventeen-year-old girl in 1993 New York City whose passion was basketball and who has a crush on her best friend Percy, I wondered if I would care for the book. Sure, there was advance praise from Column McCann, Salmon Rushdie, Chloe Benjamin--but could I relate to the story?

I opened the book and started reading. The opening scene finds the protagonist, "pizza bagel" Lucy, playing basketball with Percy. I've seen basketball games. Only when the tickets were free. But the writing was so good, I found myself drawn into the scene, turning pages. There was something about this book, about Lucy's voice.

On the surface, I had nothing in common with Lucy. And yet Lucy felt familiar, her concerns and fears universal.

In telling the story of one particular girl from a particular place and time, the author probes the eternal challenges of growing up female: conformity and acceptance by one's peer group while staying true to oneself; crushes on boys who don't see you; concerns about our attractiveness; what we give up for love; is the world is chaotic and without order, or can we find joy and hope?

There was a multitude of lines and paragraphs that I noted for their wisdom, beauty, and insight. I reread sections, scenes that elicited emotion or thoughtfulness.

I felt Lucy was channeling Holden Caulfield, who I met as a fourteen-year-old in Freshman English class in 1967. The Catcher in the Rye was life-changing for me, a voice unlike any I had encountered in a novel. The New York City setting, the wandering across the city, the characters met, the rejection of the parental values and lifestyle, Lucy's misunderstanding of a song line--Lucy is a female Holden, updated to the 1990s.

Lucy tells us that in Central Park is a statue of a boy releasing a falcon. She loves this statue but resents that only boys are portrayed in the way of the statue, that girls are shown nude or as children like the Alice in Wonderland statue. She sees in the joy and hope in The Falconer.

The Falconer, Central Park

Lucy experiences many things in the novel, including some pretty bad stuff. But she is resilient, holding to the joy and beauty she finds around her, the "the perfect jump shot" moments. She will inspire young readers and offer those of us whose choices were made long ago a journey of recollection and the affirmation of mutually shared experience.

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Falconer
by Dana Czapnik
Atria Books
Publication: January 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9322
$25 hardbound

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

In 1985, eighty-six year old Lillian Boxfish once again defies stereotypes and the advice of others, walking alone at night through New York City, revisiting and ruminating on her past, while still very much alive to the present.

Lillian's aunt Sadie was a Manhattan career girl who wrote poems about her elegant advertising creation Phoebe. She inspired Lillie. In 1926 Lillie arrived in Manhattan, secured a copywriter job at R. H. Macy's, and in the 1930s became the highest paid female in advertising--and a best selling published poet. Lionized and the media's darling, sophisticated and daring, Lillian had been on top.

Now it is New Year's Eve, 1985. Lillian puts on her forty-year-old fur coat, applies her signature lipstick, Helena Rubinstein's Orange Fire, pulls on a pair of boots, and takes to the sidewalk. She has planned one last adventure to end the year. Destination: Domenico's for a do-over of a steak dinner that ended badly twenty years previous.

Lillian's life is revealed in bits and pieces through her memories; she came, she conquered; she fell in love and became a wife and mother; she lost herself, and then her man. Once a household name, her books are found in the sale pile outside the bookstore--worthless.

Don't think she is held hostage by her past. Lillian likes to keep up to date. She likes hip-hop for its use of words and is thrilled by break-dancing. She has a 'nostalgia for the new.' She makes friends with everyone she meets along the way, and fearlessly bargains with muggers. The city has lost it's lustre, the old places are gone or declined, but Lillian has never wanted to be anywhere else.

Non-linear in structure, the book must grab readers by Lillian's personal charisma and the mystery of her past. When Max arrives on the scene the drama picks up considerably as we learn about their passionate love and the marriage that required Lillian to give up her career and brought depression and alcoholism, shock treatment, and Max's affair.

The novel was inspired by a real ad woman, Margaret Fishback. Kathleen Rooney felt a deep connection to Fishback and wanted to bring her story to a new generation. The novel is also a love story to the city, memorializing its heyday but also celebrating its 20th c multicultural vitality.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Kathleen Rooney
St Martin's Press
Publication: January 17, 2017
$25.99 hard cover
ISBN: 9781250113320

A History of New York in 101 Objects

A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam Roberts, Simon and Schuster

When I was a girl growing up along the Niagara River, I was fascinated by the depiction of New York City I saw in old movies. New York was exciting, vital--the hub of the world. In 1964 or 65 my friend went to the World Fair and I envied her. I did not get to New York City until my husband took a position in Philadelphia; later he worked in New York on Riverside Drive!

Our first visits we took the train, bringing a bag lunch to eat in Central Park. We went to the Empire State Building and saw the Statue of Liberty. We ate in China Town. We saw Yentl off Broadway, The Fantasticks, and the New York City Opera. I'll never forget The Pearl Fishers! We walked through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musem of Modern Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and I visited the Guggenheim. I shopped at Macy's, thinking of Miracle on 34th Street.

Reading Roberts' book is delightful. His mini history lessons revolve around an artifact that illuminates the city's history, but also the history of our nation.

He begins with the very rock layer that made possible the construction of Manhattan skyscrapers and ends with a Madonna statue that survived Hurricane Sandy and a fire, "a symbol of what we've been through, but also of our resurrection."

In between we read about inventions that altered life--the sewing machine, the Otis safety brake, the Erie Canal, Levittown homes. There is tragedy--the Triangle factory fire monument, which Francis Perkins called "the day the New Deal Begin," and a jar of dust from 9-11.

The arts are represented: A stamp commemorating the iconoclastic Armory Show, Leonard Bernstein's baton, the skeleton of the King Kong movie figure, the mask from The Phantom of the Opera. And of course New York's food history: An oyster, the bagel, jello, the black and white cookie, and the Horn and Hardart Automat.

Roberts' admits to being subjective in his choices. Each object had to be emblematic of historic transformation, and of enduring relevance. He writes, "history, after all, isn't really about the past. Our history is about who we are right now and where, as a society, we're headed."

I connected with many of these objects. I grew up at the end of the Erie Canal and Levittown type houses were built around me at my birth. When I saw parts of King Kong at a friend's house it terrified me. Oh, the bagels! We can't get anything like them in the Midwest. Other objects I have heard about, and some are new to me. I have been enjoying learning about them all.

I won Roberts book on Goodreads.