HEART OF NEW YORK

An illustrated nonfiction book focuses on one family’s adventures in wintry New York City.

As Rem writes in his brief foreword, this work is a marked departure from his debut, Chasing Aphrodite (2022), which extolled the warmth and beauty of Cyprus. This unusual follow-up, with delightful images by Hansen, on the surface seems to be the exact opposite kind of chronicle: New York in bleak midwinter. The author visited the city, and as he puts it, “the only vista we experienced was the pavement directly in front of us, which we scrutinized to avoid black ice.” Rem and his wife and kids arrived in New York from Calgary, and in these pages, he narrates their various excursions in the city from a third-person perspective. The world surrounding these explorations was almost always inhospitable: “The whole family had been traipsing the sky-scrapered streets of New York, passing one modern building after another, waging their own war against the scalding wind chapping their faces.” Another passage refers to “the obligatory winter mix of snow-laden grey sky and face-slapping ocean wind.” But the author’s wry, sharp-eyed humor is always as warm as the weather is cold. Whether he’s fondly reflecting on the nicknames he’s given his sons or on his wife’s nature, he relates his tales and misadventures with wonderful care and relish. Even when these episodes verge on being grim (a long story about a serious legal battle with the Canada Revenue Agency, for instance, is in many ways the highlight of the book), Rem’s gimlet-eyed raconteur spirit is irrepressible. And the balance of the volume’s antic, detailed escapades in New York reads like the most inviting kind of travelogue.

An outsiders-in–New York story with plenty of chuckles and a lot of heart.