Five Books About New York Real Estate (And Precariousness Of Same)

Inspired by reading THE TENANTS. I've only lived in three places here, and one was a dorm, but these books feed my curiosity into how other people live. (According to the New York Post, I can't even call myself a real New Yorker because I don't spend the holidays here. And how am I supposed to convince my family to up sticks, exactly? Exclusionary jerks.)

Your first apartment: I'm constantly lending out playwright and YA author Adam Rapp's first adult novel THE YEAR OF ENDLESS SORROWS, which I read in my first year of Actually Living Here. While it's set in the early '90s, its tale of a new arrival in New York -- dirty neighbors, confusing bosses and bad dates included -- is sharp and fresh. (Also, I saw him at BEA this year but couldn't place him till he'd walked off.)

Haves and have-nots: The narrator of Jeff Hobbs' THE TOURISTS, on the verge of losing his dingy studio, reconnects with old college friends whose fabulous apartments, markers of their financial success, hide the fact that they're emotionally dead. A couple's move to Midtown brings up some interesting questions about the way your neighborhood defines you, or who you want to be, and whether that correlation has any merit. This whole list could be subtitled the Life Is Not Fair list, but at least no one here lives on the high moral ground.

To buy or not to buy: I reviewed Mary Elizabeth Williams' GIMME SHELTER, about her search to own in a city rapidly pricing its residents out, earlier this year. What holds true in this market doesn't necessarily extended to the rest of the country, and its depiction of the process of buying here is frightening. Perhaps one ought not to read it if one has current plans to, as Regular Commenter Elizabeth put it, become a member of the landed gentry.

To 'burb or not to 'burb: Even if it weren't set in my neighborhood I think Cheryl Mendelson's keenly observant trilogy of New York novels would have piqued my interest; that's just a bonus. MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS spies on the middle-class Braithwaites feeling the pinch in their old place and debating whether to leave the city they love. (The other two books are ANYTHING FOR JANE, about a high-school prodigy, and LOVE, WORK, CHILDREN, which is my favorite.)

Keep dreaming! It took me forever to finish Michael Gross' 740 PARK, the history of a grande dame Upper East Side apartment building complete with Rockefellers and titles; it's so larded down with names and chronologies that you can't really read it straight through. Inasmuch as it reflects how the creme de la creme still live here, though, there's none better. If you can, it's worth going to see the building in person while or after you read, with perhaps a stopover at Bernie Madoff's old place in the same neighborhood.