Triburbia : A Novel
Author(s): Karl Taro Greenfeld
“Pitch-perfect, dry, and smart, this is a vivid portrait of New York, our lives, our loves, and our hearts.” — Susan Orlean, author of Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief
“I loved Triburbia, loved dropping in on these wonderful characters with their outsized appetites and ambitions, the lithe and lively prose, the way the book swirls in and out of these lives and maps perfectly a place and a moment in time. Most of all, though, I loved Karl Taro Greenfeld’s deft satirical touch, the searing empathy with which he offers up his privileged, damaged people to the world.” — Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
Karl Taro Greenfeld, author of the acclaimed memoir Boy Alone, delivers a remarkable first novel about a group of families in a fashionable Manhattan neighborhood wrestling with the dark realities of their lives.
Thrown together by circumstance, six fathers—a sound engineer, a sculptor, a film producer, a chef, a memoirist, a gangster—meet each morning at a local Tribeca coffee shop after walking their children to their exclusive school. Over the course of a single school year, we are privy to their secrets, passions, and hopes, and learn of their dreams deferred as they confront harsh realities about ambition, wealth, and sex. And we meet their wives and children, who together with these men are discovering the hard truths and welcome surprises that accompany family, marriage, and real estate at midlife.
Fascinatingly layered and multidimensional, these linked stories, arranged like puzzle pieces, create a powerful portrait of unlikely friends and their neighborhood in transition. Striking chords that range from haunting and heartbreaking to darkly funny and deeply poignant, Triburbia marks the start of a brilliant literary career.
Review(s):
“Greenfeld’s sensitivity to nuances of the zeitgeist and his keen observational skills make his characters (some of whom will seem eerily familiar to longtime residents of downtown Manhattan) instantly recognizable as creatures of their time and place without quite denying them their humanity.”
“Greenfeld reveals his characters’ humanity with sly humor and an unerring eye.”
“Greenfeld taps into something universal with Triburbia. . . . An accomplished journalist, Greenfeld brings a reporter’s curiosity and an artist’s empathy to his crackling, observant first novel.”
“Greenfeld is an acute social observer, but Triburbia is more than a chronicle of fading hipness; it’s also a loving examination of marital and family trials and ties.”
“The pleasures of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s writing are easy to catalog -- a crystalline, terrifically readable prose style; a vast repository of trenchant observations; and a caustic sense of humor that recalls Jonathan Franzen yet with a refreshing economy of speech.”
“Dubliners for the middle-aged downtown set. . . . Mr. Greenfeld’s prose is as lean and declarative as a newspaper article, though there are moments of creepy comic brilliance.”
“Triburbia is darkly humorous, occasionally lascivious, unsparing in its condemnations of the main characters and intrepid in its honest descriptions of the human conscience… But it’s not a sad book. It’s a candid one. And a good one. It is reassuring, cathartic even.”
“Triburbia is a snapshot of a Manhattan subculture at a certain moment in time. . . . An acclaimed memoirist and journalist turns to fiction to capture the spirit of his neighborhood in the full throes of gentrification.”
“Compelling. . . . Greenfeld brilliantly illuminates the pecking order and power plays behind the smug façade of this fashionable urban fortress . . . A surprising, involving, and strikingly perceptive tale of social and personal metamorphoses.”
“An absorbing first novel. . . . Greenfeld wields his critiques, humor, and observations to create a compelling little universe.”
ISBN: 9780062132406