THE FUTURE OF LOVE

In her first novel, memoirist Abbott (Love’s Apprentice, 1998, etc.) writes an elegiac paean to New York City while incorporating the experience of 9/11 into her varied characters’ interwoven lives.

The novel’s heart is Antonia, a feisty Jewish feminist-activist of a certain age: in other words, a New York classic. Recently widowed and ensconced in her increasingly valuable Village apartment, Antonia finds herself surprisingly well-off. She is happily carrying on a passionate love affair with Sam, a semi-retired, married publisher. Sam’s wife Edith is portrayed as a rigid, frigid philistine who avoids the city and resents hosting her lesbian granddaughter’s commitment ceremony with the niece of Antonia’s longtime downstairs neighbor, a dying gay dancer who has lived with his partner for 45 years. Although Abbott’s dialogue occasionally lapses into awkward formality, she imbues these elderly characters with something better than dignity: a joie de vivre the novel’s younger characters only strive for. Antonia’s earnest daughter Maggie, who lives on the Upper West Side, correctly suspects that her husband Mark is having an affair with their four-year-old daughter’s teacher Sophie. Mark is a depressed, depressingly Peter Pan–like man. Having lost his job at an investment firm, he mopes around, guilty and resentful, while caring for his daughter and working part-time in a wine shop. Antonia disapproves of Mark, although the parallel between his unhappy marriage and Sam’s is unavoidable. On September 11 Mark is scheduled for a job interview in the North Tower. Instead, he finds himself walking to Sophie’s Astoria apartment, where he plans to fake his death in order to escape his unsatisfying life. In contrast, the collapse spurs Sam to attempt reconciliation with Edith. Happily for Antonia, neither man’s plan proves to be realistic.

Elegantly written, conveying an obvious love and despair for the city and its inhabitants.