Christine

As you probably know, The Astral is an iconic building located up the street from the bookstore, and most of the action in Kate's new book takes place in our very own Greenpoint. Like she did in The Great Man, Kate has an uncanny ability to draw me into characters that I would not normally be attracted to reading about but then can't stop thinking about. In this book we follow a poet in his late fifties as he struggles with the end of his marriage, his relationship with his daughter and lifelong friends, and his personal journey to reinvent himself.

As someone who loves fictional New York history, this book did not disappoint. A man gets granted eternal life but can't leave the island of Manhattan, so he sees it change from the 1700s up through September 11th. It's obviously got a mystical element that I loved, but the New York stuff, from native Brooklynite and Daily News writer Pete Hamill, is well researched and super interesting.

Recommended by an Italian friend who read it in the original Italian and loved it, this book is a very intense, very quick read. You are living inside the head of a woman scorned, but it's nothing like the stereotypical melodramatic portrayals of this kind of story. It's gritty and dark and you go a bit crazy along with the main character. It's amazing.

This is one of the most unique books I've read, it really is about one person's ordinary life but told through diagrams and charts and illustrations and it's funny and poignant and great. Read it.