Have you heard of Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of New York City? It has quite a history, some of it not all that great, but it’s certainly interesting to read about!
These nine books, consisting of fiction and non-fiction, tell stories that revolve around various parts of history in Brooklyn across its many neighborhoods. Some of these books talk about the more seedy or remote parts of Brooklyn just a few decades ago and it’s pretty interesting for me, a Brooklynite, to discover this background.
1. the astral
image via amazon
This fiction novel talks about the very real rose-colored building in Greenpoint, which the novel is named after and was built by industrialist Charles Pratt for oil workers. It’s so large that it takes up an entire block on Franklin Street. I did a Google search and it’s quite a nice apartment building.
The story starts off with poet Harry Quirk, his wife, Luz, a nurse, and their two children, Karina and Hector. Karina grew up to a fervent freegan, while Hector grew up to become a cult-ish Christian member (talk about questionable parenting).
Luz then finds poems written by Harry that ignites her long-standing suspicions of his infidelity and destroys them, but this causes him to kick her out of the house. Harry then has to face the consequences of his literary, marital, financial, and even parental failures so he can move to higher ground in his life and end up in his wife’s good graces again.
2. last exit to brooklyn
image via amazon
This novel, which was written in 1964, explores the then-seedy bits of Brooklyn, such as the forlorn areas of Sunset Park and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (These areas have become rather upscale, so it’s so strange to read about a vastly different history!)
The deeply disturbing novel explores the prostitutes, drunks, addicts, and johns, fierce and lonely creatures desperately searching for just one moment of transcendence amidst all the decay and brutality of the waterfront – though none of them have any real hope of escape.
The author, Hubert Selby Jr. (he wrote “Requiem for a Dream“) is a Brooklyn native himself and his goal in this novel is to paint a portrait of mid-20th-century urban blight and crime.
3. a meaningful life
image via amazon
This novel was written in 1971 and is a black comedy about the American quest for redemption through real estate and a picture of New York City in collapse.
The protagonist, Lowell Lake, is a fresh college graduate who heads to New York where he plans to become successful as a writer. Instead, he finds a job as a technical editor, while his marriage to his wife slowly burns. After discovering a crumbling mansion in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn, he uses all of his money and his wife’s will to purchase it. He then spends all his time working on demolition and construction to dig up the lost history of the house and restore it to its former glory… though the way he does it is a bit worrisome.
4. the chosen
image via amazon
This novel is a coming-of-age story about two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s. It’s spring of 1944, and fifteen-year-olds Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders have lived five blocks apart all their lives. They finally meet one day in an accident during a softball game that sparks an unlikely friendship. They both are drawn into one another’s world despite one father’s strong opposition and their different life paths – one is set to become a Hasidic rebbe, and the other at ease with secular America.
Set against the backdrop of WWII and the creation of the state of Israel, the novel is a story about transformation, tradition, and finding yourself – even if that means leaving your community.
5. desperate characters
image via amazon
The novel follows Otto and Sophie Bentwood, forty-year-olds who live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn during the 1960s. With no children, they were able to get expensive new things, like a new stainless-steel kitchen, or a Mercedes parked outside by the curb.
One day, Sophie is bitten on the hand by a probably-rabies-infected stray cat, a symbol for the dangers the neighborhood still faces. Soon, a series of small and ominous disasters seem to unfold within just one weekend. Otto breaks up with his business partner, Charlie, and the Bentwoods find their country home vandalized. Soon, the fault lines and several fractures are revealed in their marriage – and a society – which seeks to upturn everything.
6. a walker in the city
image via amazon
This novel is a recounting of the author’s childhood in a working-class neighborhood and his eventual foray across the river to Manhattan, where treasures like the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum beckoned. Eventually, the author, Alfred Kazin, would travel even farther to build a life around books, language, and literature and explore all that world had to offer.
The story is a classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century. It explores not only tenements, subways, and synagogues, but also the desires and fears we face when we wish to leave the familiar and go into the unknown.
7. brown girl, brownstones
image via amazon
This novel is set in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and World War II. It is an enduring story of Selina Boyce, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants, who is caught between the struggles of her hard-working mother, who wants to “buy house” and educate her daughters, and her father, who longs to return to Barbados. Selina, however, wants to define her own identity and values, but struggles to do so when she is surrounded by racism and poverty.
This coming-of-age story paints a vivid painting of a family’s struggle to achieve the American Dream.
8. the amazing adventures of cavalier and clay
image via amazon
This novel begins in New York City in 1939, where a young escape artist and budding magician, Joe Kavalier, arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While Hitler’s shadow falls across Europe, America is in the Golden Age of comic books.
Sammy is looking to capitalize on the comic book craze. His perfect partner is found in Joe, and together, they embark on an adventure that takes them into the heart of Manhattan and old-fashioned ambition. As the two teenage boys spin comics like the heroic, fascist-fighting “Escapist,” to the beautiful and mysterious “Luna Moth,” mistress of the night, Joe and Sammy find themselves carving out their lives and careers at the top of the Empire State Building.
9. Motherless Brooklyn
image via amazon
Lionel Essrog, Brooklyn’s very own self-appointed human freak show, is an orphan whose Tourettes drives him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in very original ways. Along with three veterans of the St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna’s limo service/detective agency, whose assigned tasks aren’t exactly legal for Lionel.
When Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel’s colleagues ends up in jail, the other two vie for Frank’s position, and the victim’s widow skips town. Lionel is forced to untangle the threads of the case as a detective even though he has trouble with something simple like conversing.