Lead Review

  • Book: Cobble Hill
  • Location: Cobble Hill
  • Author: Cecily von Ziegesar

Review Author: Tina Hartas

Location

Content

3.5*
Cecily von Ziegesar is the author of Gossip Girl and I am sure that any devotees of that book (and TV series!) will find plenty to enjoy in this novel.

This is the story of selected inhabitants of the rather lovely brownstone area of Brooklyn called Cobble Hill. It’s not quite the artsy set but it looks interesting enough to me, exploring the lives of its inhabitants through fiction. Cobble Hill is South West of Manhattan, not far from the Brooklyn Bridge and I think that if you are visiting the iconic bridge, then it is only a further 20 minute walk to this neighbourhood.

Roy and Wendy have relocated from the UK, she purportedly for a job. He is writing his novel (he is a well known author who has been inspirationally fallow for the last few years) and now is on the cusp of penning a new novel with the title of Gold or maybe Red – the colour to be determined depending on where the plot takes him. As an aside, he despises the name Bettina (that’s my full name) and he is determined to send her and Ceran on a mission to Mars and possibly to their deaths. So, I guess I need to redress the balance and say the author’s choice of names – for a Brit like me – are just plain weird. ‘Shy’ is the daughter of Roy and Wendy, ‘Stuart Little’ is an old rocker (and no mice are involved), ‘Tupper’ is one of the neighbours and ‘Peaches’ is the local school nurse. Go figure!!

This is an astutely observed novel about people all living in the same neighbourhood. It is funny in parts and changes tone when there is a conflagration – until then it is a well told story that competently straddles the fine line between funny and absurd. It then maybe plateaued a little and for me, it then didn’t prove quite as engaging as it was in the early stages.

There are brownstones aplenty for anyone looking in on New York, they are of course the archetypical symbol of the city. The storyline does have a resonance in real life – Martin Amis’ $4.6 million house burnt down (could that have been the inspiration for the fire in the novel, I wonder?) and if you had a spare $8 million (ish) then you could have bought Nora Jones’ house in Cobble Hill earlier in 2020 (sorry, it’s been sold). You do get the impression that the people in the novel are somehow inspired by specific people, but who knows…..

One to pick up if you would like to ‘travel’ to New York.

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