Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue a novel of pastry, guilt, and music
It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels beyond his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighborhood. Between paralyzing bouts of claustrophobia, Nathan wonders whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry maker whose parents may or may not have been Nazis. His father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighborhood.
"Captures the lives of the inhabitants of a tight-knit, ethnically diverse neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York, including Nathan, a claustrophobic married man falling for Karoline, a German pastry maker."
"It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels beyond his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighborhood. Between paralyzing bouts of claustrophobia, Nathan wonders whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry maker whose parents may or may not have been Nazis. His father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighborhood."@en
"This novel covers very little territory geographically, but its human characters stretch from the shtetl to Caribbean isles and beyond. These denizens of New York's Lower East Side come from Germany, Italy, Poland, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Mashed together on very little land, lives collide and combine in a maelstrom of languages, customs, foods, addictions, and violence. The beginnings of neighborhood gentrification foreshadow imminent change. Kurlansky's apt description of all this is meshugaloo, a combination of Yiddish and Spanish words that points to a sort of radical craziness. Amidst all this, Nathan Seltzer tries to fend off Kopy Katz, a predatory chain eager to swallow up his little photocopy shop, which plays a benevolent role in neighborhood life. Meanwhile, Nathan also has his eye on the daughter of the German pastry-shop owner. A mysterious murderer adds a frisson to this melange of foods and funk. Anyone not intimate with both Yiddish and Spanish and the folkways of Manhattan may find some of this story opaque. The author closes with recipes for caponata, bacala, pasteles, and kugelhopf. Based on the popularity of his nonfiction books, including Cod (1997), expect demand."@en
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