Better Homes and Husbands

By Valerie Ann Leff

Book Overview

980 Park, a fictional, pre-war co-op on the Northwest corner of Park Avenue and 83rd Street, houses the rich and famous-Sidney Sapphire, the blonde anchorwoman of ABC News, Angela Somoza, the gorgeous Nicaraguan jet-setter, Bob Horowitz, the former chairman of the United Jewish Appeals, and the usual collection of banking and industrial CEO's, Wall Street magnates, and white-haired philanthropists. The Brooklyn-born doorman, Vinnie Ferretti, joins the ranks when he becomes a major fashion designer. The building's board, rich as clotted cream, sips gin in the afternoons and devises ways to keep out anyone deemed "inappropriate." Stifled resentments come to a head when the French baroness in the penthouse dies, and two Jewish families in the building suspect the co-op board of more discrimination with regard to prospective buyers than might be legal. Better Homes and Husbands is a stylish, richly woven novel about class and caste feuds, played out with ferocity and etiquette in a posh New York apartment building during the tumultuous period of social change between 1970 and 2000.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312330618
• ISBN13: 9780312330613
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.0" x 5.7"

Customer Reviews

Leff is a great storyteller!

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.

Entertaining and touching

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!

Brilliant, Desarming and Compassionate!

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!

A Rare and Delightful Read

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

This Year's Must Read - A Great Summer Book!

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.