Morningside Heights: A Novel [Hardcover]

Cheryl Mendelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2003

Following the tremendous success of her first book, a nonfiction work on housekeeping that became a surprise bestseller, Cheryl Mendelson brings to her debut novel the same intensely readable style that made Home Comforts so popular. In the spirit of Anthony Trollope, she roots her story very much in a specific time and place—1999, in an old-fashioned New York City neighborhood that’s becoming rapidly gentrified—and the enormously engaging result resembles a twentieth-century version of The Way We Live Now.

Anne and Charles Braithwaite have spent their entire married life in a sedate old apartment building in Morningside Heights, a northern Manhattan neighborhood filled with intellectual, artistic souls like themselves, who thrive on the area’s abundant parks, cultural offferings, and reasonably priced real estate. The Braithwaites, musicians with several young children, are at the core of a circle of friends who make their living as writers, psychiatrists, and professors. But as the novel opens, their comfortable life is being threatened as a buoyant economy sends newly rich Wall Street types scurrying northward in search of good investments and more space. At the same time, the Braithwaites weather the difficult love lives of their friends, and all of the characters confront their fears that the institutions and social values that have until now provided them with meaning and stability—science, religion, the arts—are in increasing decline. Though the group clings to the rituals and promises of such institutions, the Braithwaites’ imminent departure sends shock waves through their community. As the family contemplates the impossible—a move to the suburbs—their predicament represents the end of a cultured kind of city life that middle-class families can no longer afford.

This intelligent and captivating social chronicle is the first of a trilogy of novels about Morningside Heights; readers sure to be drawn in by Mendelson’s habit-forming prose have much more to look forward to.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The busy, intersecting lives of a group of Manhattanites living in the staid but rapidly changing Upper West Side neighborhood of Morningside Heights near Columbia University are the focus of this talky, occasionally stilted debut novel by Mendelson (Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House). Opera singer Charles Braithwaite; his wife, Anne, a pianist; and their three (soon to be four) children are the novel's ostensible protagonists. The book's real hero, however, is their beloved neighborhood, which they fear they will soon have to leave, unable to afford their cramped apartment. They are surrounded by a large cast of the sort of people commonly found on Manhattan's Upper West Side-independent scholars, professors, eccentric neighbors, with rich stockbrokers invading the haunts of the original residents. Narrative drama, such as it is, is provided by the death of an elderly resident of the Braithwaite's building. What were the true circumstances of her death, what role was played by her shifty trustee-and most importantly, who will get her apartment? The incorporation of neighborhood history and description is sometimes a bit stiff, and Mendelson's tone can be stuffy-as befits her subjects-but the accumulation of day-to-day detail, social commentary and emotional insight eventually yields a consistent picture of a rarefied milieu.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the first entry in a projected trilogy set in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, first-novelist Mendelson homes in on a charmed and charming circle of friends with the zeal of an anthropologist. For the first time in their placid marriage, the Braithwaites are experiencing serious tension. The overambitious gentrification plans of their co-op's new board of directors and the impending birth of their fourth child have pushed the couple's precarious finances past the breaking point. Charles, an opera singer, and Anne, who has turned domesticity into a deeply creative act, must now seriously consider a dreaded move to the suburbs. In addition, they are concerned about their best friends, a brilliant but lonely scientist and an acclaimed writer still reeling from yet another disastrous relationship. Readers will find it hard to resist Mendelson's radiant optimism, for she creates a world in which people naturally find and follow the arc of their true talents, lovers' defenses miraculously melt away, and decency and compassion are richly rewarded. This is one seductive novel. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (June 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375508368
• ISBN-13: 978-0375508363
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,851,002 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cheryl Mendelson is a Harvard Law School graduate, a sometime philosophy professor, a novelist (Morningside Heights and Love, Work, Children), and a homemaker by choice. Born into a rural family in Greene County, Pennsylvania, she now lives in New York City with her husband and son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life Among the Intellectuals, October 30, 2003

By 

Wendy Kaplan (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Morningside Heights: A Novel (Hardcover)

This such an unusual book, that I'm not sure how to categorize it, except to say that it is an extremely subtle, highly enjoyable, satirical view of the Upper West Side of New York City, where opera singers and scientists mingle with shrinks and Hispanic doormen.

Anne and Charles are one such couple: He, an under-rated opera singer, has a studio at home in their rent-controlled Morningside Heights apartment; she, a former concert accompaniest, takes care of their three children while taking her microcosm of the world very seriously indeed. She thinks nothing of purchasing a thousand-dollar violin for her 3-year-old, but dresses her daughters in hand-me-downs to save money; she serves truffles and caviar at her dinner parties, but refuses to take a cab. One should hate such people, but the very subtle way in which each is portrayed makes the reader (at least this reader) love them instead.

Then there is Merritt, an internationally known writer who can't keep a man to save her life, and Morris, a curmudgeonly scientist who thinks it might be time to get married. Both dear friends of Anne and Charles, they hate each other mightily, but can't seem to find anybody else they like better.

Add to the mix a very odd and hilarious assortment of highbrow intellectuals who take themselves oh-so-seriously, and you have a modern-day comedy of manners that reminds one of Henry James.

I loved this book. It's not for everybody, but I found it refreshingly different and look forward to the next by this interesting author!

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Yes and no on Morningside Heights, July 17, 2005

By 

Fastwalk (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Morningside Heights: A Novel (Hardcover)

There are many positive things about this novel. The basic idea of exploring a community and how it shapes, and enhances, the lives of its cultured and intellectual residents is appealing. The characters have ideas and some depth. It's nice to see children depicted in a more or less realistic way. It's also nice to see Mendelson further develop her theme of domesticity and its power over the moods and well-being of those who experience it. Reading Home Comforts encouraged me to invest a little more in the domestic realm myself, although often my goals outstrip my grasp.

On the other hand, the book shows major weaknesses that perhaps are characteristic of beginning novelists. Basically, the plot is clunky. The characters' problems are developed and then--ridiculously--solved by means of an expedient that no one could possibly believe in. They inherit an apartment? In Manhattan? From a neighbor they barely knew? Give me a break!

I also felt that Mendelson wandered far from the economic realism of Austen or Trollope. We're supposed to believe that a family with three children, and expensive tastes, living on the income of one moderately successful person (moderately successful in THE ARTS) is able to send two children to private school and plans to send a third to a costly preschool? In Manhattan private schools cost about $25,000 a year, when all costs are factored in. So, for the two girls, we're at $50,000. Plus, they're planning on a $12,000 a year preschool for Stuart. We're at $62,000 just with tuition! And don't they have to plan for college? This is wildly unrealistic. Let's not forget that their domestic ambitions also require spending a lot on fancy foodstuffs. Plus, their cultural ambitions require much money for artistic endeavors, including expensive musical instruments for their children and private lessons.

I can't imagine how this could be possible, given the economic situation that Mendelson outlines. Given that she sets the situation up this way, though, it's even more ridiculous to imagine that this family will be driven from Manhattan to the hated suburbs in part because of a coop special assessment. Such assessments are time-limited. Anne couldn't take on an extra music student or two a week? She has a mom living in the area who adores her children. Her mom couldn't look after Stuart during those few extra hours? Her older two kids are already in school, but she can't step up her (highly flexible) work endeavors a notch? Instead, the family has to bag it and move to the suburbs?

And why can't they move to Brooklyn? This is never explained. I'm forced to conclude they couldn't move to Brooklyn because it wouldn't work for the plot. There are many cultured, musical, and intellectual people in Brooklyn. This family is depicted as owning a reasonable apartment in Manhattan. If sold, that could easily enable them to buy a very decent apartment with reasonable maintenance in Brooklyn. Why wouldn't they do that, instead of (inexplicably) going to Putnam county, which would require the family's earner, Charles, to commute an hour and a half each way every time he needed to go to the city for his job? This is absurd.

I believe Putnam county figures in the novel only so Mendelson can depict the sharpest possible contrast between the culture of the Braithwaites and the bumpkins who live in Putnam County. They are obese, they are inspid, and they don't even accept that the Braithwaite's daughter, with her appalling academic record, would automatically outrank the local yokels in terms of the school tracking system.

Sad to say, I think Mendelson is a snob. She had to set the novel up this way so that she could portray the full heartbreak of the threatened loss of community by a family so culturally deserving as the Braithwaites. Frankly, they might have learned something by seeing how the scorned people of Putnam managed their lives. But no, they're never forced to do this, because they inherit an apartment--and find the proof of their inheritance in a potato bin! This really is not a good ending. The plot dynamics are labored and it's hard to maintain interest when the reader can see a mile away what's going to happen.

To return to the positive, though, Mendelson does have a strong point of view on modern life and how it can best be lived and she situates her characters in a community that, as others have noted, almost becomes a character itself. In my view, in her future work she should think harder about the plot and try to find mechanisms for advancing the story that don't short circuit her characters' growth by solving their problems without requiring much, or anything, of them.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More, please!, January 8, 2004

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Morningside Heights: A Novel (Hardcover)

Thank goodness this is just the first book of a planned trilogy. Once you meet the Braithwaites in this, Mendelson's first detour into fiction, you will want more and more of them, their family, and their extended circle of friends. Delightful Manhattan neighborhood ambiance, urban optimism, marital stress...what's not to love?
Less than great literature, but way more than a good beach read.