Customer Reviews

Better Homes and Husbands

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Welcome to Manhattan's 980 Park Avenue where the rich and filthy rich reside. Don't be jealous, though, because they're not without their problems. They have their share of struggles, scandals and grief. As the poor are so fond of saying, "Money can't buy happiness." But let us not forget the retort of the rich, "It makes misery so much easier." Such is the case at 980 Park Avenue.

BETTER HOMES & HUSBANDS gives us an inside look at the lives of those who live and work in the building; those who are separated not only by walls of plaster and plywood but also by walls of class, society and snobbery. However, no wall is enough to keep them out of each other's lives completely. Their joys and their tragedies intermingle over the years and no one's business is as confidential as they'd like to pretend it is.

Take, for instance, Claudia and Madeline, girlhood friends who are as close as sisters but become separated due to a terrible tragedy. What starts out as a simple life and close friendship becomes hopelessly complicated as misunderstandings occur. Then there's Claudia's father, Dick Sapphire, who finds love for the second time and then has to adjust himself to a wife and a life so much different from what he had anticipated.

There's Vinnie, the elevator man, who leaves the building behind in what seems like misfortune only to find that it has led him to the greatest opportunity of his life. And let us not forget the Baroness Idabell Smith d'Alencon, a woman whose invitations are few and far between but coveted by every woman in the building. You'll also meet Angelita Somoza, an exquisite woman who has a never-ending procession of maids and nannies who seem to have no skills whatsoever for cleaning or childcare.

The stories in this book span the timeframe of 1970 to 2000 and the changes that occur in the lives of the residents and in society. The residents of 980 Park Avenue may know which stock to buy to increase their fortunes. They may know the designer from which to purchase an evening gown for the next society ball. The one thing they don't seem to be familiar with is the old adage that good fences make for good neighbors.

Valerie Ann Leff makes a charming debut with her first novel.

--- (...)

I didn't exactly grow up in the world (the haves and have mores) depicted in Better Homes and Husbands, but I grew up adjacent to it-certainly close enough to marvel at Valerie Ann Leff's ability to x-ray the lives and loves, illusions and delusions of a certain caste of moneyed New Yorkers who inhabit one of Park Avenue's storied addresses (albeit a fictional one).

Valerie's talent for observation is flawless, and her prose effortless. Her deftly drawn characters are compelling without exception. Taken together they make 980 Park Avenue a kaleidoscope of old money and new, power and fame, devastating lies and universal truths. In the end, the building becomes kind of a character itself, something to aspire to and something to escape from, a dream and a nightmare, a postcard from the past and a letter to the future.

Wherever you live now, Park Avenue or Pacoima, this book is one great summer read. You won't want to put it down, and you will never want it to end.

Books that explore class difference in America are usually heavy, depressing and pedantic. Better Homes and Husbands is a delightful departure. Set in one of the great old apartment buildings on Park Avenue in New York City, the novel takes us into the lives of those who live there and those who work there, from the baroness in the penthouse all the way down to the illegal Guatemalans hidden in a bedroom in one of the grand apartments.
Valerie Leff has accomplished that rare and wonderful possibility of fiction; to make us feel deeply the human condition, its sorrows and its dilemmas, and also to make us laugh, as when eight year old Madeline Sapphire, on a dare, bites the "chunky rectangular penis" of a Tiki statue, or an elderly wealthy man takes his turn running the elevator because the service people are on strike, much to the peril of the residents.
My own favorite chapters are the story of Sandra Payne, the daughter of a wealthy bond trader, who becomes pregnant by their long-time Jamaican chauffeur. Leff is brilliant in working out the relationships between the families in the building, and her resolution of the story of the black child born into a house where no black person could buy an apartment, is nothing less than brilliant.
I myself was born into an apartment house in the slums of St. Louis, at the polar opposite end of the social scale from Park Avenue penthouses. Never before have I read such a delightful, honest, and knowledgeable book about the great divide in America, seen from that other side where secrets are held close, and doormen protect the residents from the ways most of us live. I cannot recommend Better Homes and Husbands too highly.

Pat Schneider
Amherst, Massachusetts

I am one of those readers who devours an engaging novel and puts one that does not capture my interest down after the first few pages. These surprising and moving stories about quirky, real characters had my interest from page one. True that these are separate stories but to me the building itself is a character that holds it all together as a novel--and the same characters emerge at different times from different points of view. I usually read Southern writers, and I was intrigued by the similarities of the class, race and gender issues that naturally emerge in NYC as well as Savannah or Charleston. Leff's exploration of these issues is not heavyhanded--it is just the way it was. And I find a sympathetic approach to all characters--including the social climbers as well as the Latin American woman who bucks the system through social action on the upper East side. With all due respect to the reader who suspected bias, I thought the treatment of this character and her husband was sympathetic as well as a good and surprising story. Leff takes everyone on their own terms and sees their passions and foibles in a realistic way. I want to read more about some of these characters, especially Mallory, the inventive son of a very independent teenage girl and a Jamaican chauffeur, who finds his own way back into the permanent life of the building.

I read this book because I liked a short story by Leff that appeared in _The Antioch Review_. I was not disappointed -- this book was great. The stories of the New Yorkers in 980 Park Avenue absorbed me and I felt as though I finished the book in a matter of hours. The themes of infidelity, race and social class were handled extremely well. I will be looking forward to Leff's next novel. Keep up the good work!

I couldn't put this book down, eager to see what the characters would do next. It is a story told with humor, and edgy social insight but also with deep humanity. The residents of an Upper East side apartment building are drawn in authentic strokes but are not stereotypes. We know their shortcomings but also their unique flavors. Read it and enjoy!

980 Park Avenue sets the scene for three decades of dramatic and touching stories. Each apartment is a different reality depicted with wit, generosity and a disarming authenticity I found very appealing and explicit.
You will feel the reality of these stories, the quality and serious substance, doesn't go unnoticed here. The people are real and the ironic touch of fate keeps them closer than they realize. This is a gem, you must get it. Funny, real, human, full of detail. A must have!

This book's vivid characters and rich subplots reminded me of Isabelle Allende's stories. Not a flippant "chick-lit" at all. Very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable. I felt more like I was reading a story from "The New Yorker" than say, "People Magazine."

I recently discovered Valerie Leff's delightful novel called Better Homes and Husbands. In the tradition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Leff connects the seemingly disparate lives and stories of a community of residents and staff members in an apartment building in one of New York City's elite neighborhoods. Leff's characters pull us into their world with rich and vivid detail, and their voices come to life as one reads. I'm very glad I discovered this novel.

I very much enjoyed Valerie Ann Leff's debut novel centering on the inhabitants of 980 Park Ave, a fictional co-op in Manhattan. Each chapter focused on a different tenant in the building as well as a different year, all the while tying in characters and events from other stories so that the reader is never left wondering what ever happened to so and so. I was rather impressed how Leff managed to keep each characters voice fresh and distinct throughout the book making the reader believe that many different people are indeed telling the story.

`BETTER HOMES &HUSBANDS' is charismatic, appealing and never dull, a great first effort from an author we should all keep an eye out for. Anyone who loves to relax and curl up with a good book at the end of a long day I highly recommend this delightful novel to you!