NY Times book review pans 1970s SoHo fiction
and now for something completely different…
Yesterday’s NY Times included a review by Michiko Kakutani of the new novel Before, by Irini Spanidou, which is set in the dangerous SoHo of the 1970s, SoHo Loft, ’70s Ambience, Near Ninth Circle of Hell.
Ms. Kakutani does not like the book very much, as she closed her review with:
Such passages suggest that Ms. Spanidou does not really know these characters, and that “Before” is a concept novel — self-loathing princess crashes and burns in 1970s New York — that never manages to turn the heroine embodying its concept into a sympathetic or recognizable human being.
Which is too bad, since it would be interesting to read an account of Early SoHo that is true to that life. But the review seems a well-reasoned one, based on the extended excerpt provided on the Random House website. The excerpt includes this scene-setter:
SoHo was dangerous then. Most buildings still housed working factories, many stood empty, and only a few had been turned into living lofts. Late into the night, pockets where new bars had sprung up were boisterous with life, light streaming out onto the street like iridescent mist and rock music blaring as one walked by. But the surrounding areas, often stretching for blocks, were all but deserted and the scattering of solitary rows of lighted windows did little to assuage a passerby’s fears. Every day came new reports of robberies, muggings, a shooting or a rape. Just that week, unable to force open the police lock on the door of a loft, the robbers had taken an ax to the adjoining wall, hacking a four-by-five hole.
The eight-story building where Beatrice and Ned James lived had only two other tenants. ***
Not so bad, that. But there are clunkers even in the publisher’s selected excerpt, such as:
At this point she didn’t know what to make of Perkins. She had an uncanny ability to form accurate first impressions—her imagination riding over intuition’s gaps, if at times with too overblown a flourish—but they took time to surface in the articulate part of her mind. All she had now was a feeling about him—of fear and a murky sexual attraction—that she couldn’t pry apart from a deeper, vague foreboding.
If I see it in the bookstore I may skim for passages that describe SoHo back in the day, but I don’t think I am buying this book. If anyone reads it, let me know what you think.
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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