LAST NIGHT IN BROOKLYN

Two Brooklyn women forge identities and careers in their rapidly gentrifying borough.

Narrator Alicia Canales Forten, an aspiring writer/director currently writing ad copy, is the offspring of a fleeting romance between her working-class Puerto Rican mother and a father from the Black elite who sees his daughter two weeks a year at his parents’ house on Martha’s Vineyard. La Garza is a Fort Greene legend for her fabulous parties and the impending initial public offering of her eponymous fashion label. At first Alicia can’t figure out why glamorous La Garza goes out of her way to befriend her, even if they’re neighbors in the funky area between the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that houses many young people of color striving to get ahead. She soon learns that La Garza wants to reconnect with Alicia’s cousin Devon, a married Wall Streeter who was her first love. As in her previous two novels, Gonzalez trains a razor-sharp eye on class and racial distinctions, particularly in Alicia’s conflict over whether she really wants to marry her medical student fiancé and settle into the Black bourgeoisie, and in La Garza’s reckless affair with Devon. Longtime Brooklynites will enjoy recognizing the local businesses and landmarks Gonzalez name-checks, from Cake Man Raven to the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Watchtower sign, but any reader can appreciate the authenticity of her salty voice and the changing cityscape it describes, as neighborhood landmarks are torn down to make way for condos and boutiques. Her bracing point of view animates a propulsive storyline strung with memorable characters, among them Devon’s buttoned-up wife, Marla (tougher than she seems), and shady, mobbed-up “stockbroker” Augusts Jankovskis, who has ulterior motives for financially backing La Garza. Devon’s sexy colleague, Matteo Jones, who tempts Alicia to forget she’s engaged, isn’t quite as interesting, but he supports the novel’s main mission: chronicling Alicia’s struggle to sort out who she is and what she wants, with her new friend La Garza as both role model and cautionary tale. Brilliant party scenes, tart dialogue, and dramatic plot developments further enrich this gripping work, another step forward for the talented Gonzalez.

Smart, tough-minded, and passionate: a pleasure from start to finish.