About this item
Town & Country Magazines Must-Read Books of Summer 2019 | She Reads Best Books for Your Summer Roadtrip"Carnegie Hill has got to be one of the most charming, hilarious, and insightful books Ive read in ages. When it comes to New Yorks (often befuddled) elite, Vatner has an eagle eye for detail, and an ear for whip-smart dialogue. This is an assured, heartfelt debut." -Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding and Honestly, We Meant Well. Deception is just another day in the lives of the Upper East Sides elite.. At age thirty-three, Penelope "Pepper" Bradford has no career, no passion and no children. Her intrusive parents still treat her like a child. Moving into the Chelmsford Arms with her fiancé Rick, an up-and-coming financier, and joining the co-op board give her some control over her life -- until her parents take a gut dislike to Rick and urge Pepper to call off the wedding. When, the week before the wedding, she glimpses a trail of desperate text messages from Ricks obsessed female client, Pepper realizes that her parents might be right.. She looks to her older neighbors in the building to help decide whether to stay with Rick, not realizing that their marriages are in crisis, too. Birdie and Georges bond frays after George is forced into retirement at sixty-two. And Francis alienates Carol, his wife of fifty years, and everyone else he knows, after being diagnosed with an inoperable heart condition. To her surprise, Peppers best model for love may be a clandestine gay romance between Caleb and Sergei, a black porter and a Russian doorman.. Jonathan Vatners Carnegie Hill is a belated-coming-of-age novel about sustaining a marriage -- and knowing when to walk away. It chronicles the lives of wealthy New Yorkers and the staff who serve them, as they suffer together and rebound, struggle to free themselves from family entanglements, deceive each other out of love and weakness, and fumble their way to honesty.
About the Author
JONATHAN VATNER is the author of THE BRIDESMAIDS UNION, launching June 14, 2022, from St. Martin's Press. His first book, CARNEGIE HILL (Thomas Dunne Books, 2019) earned praise from People, Town & Country, The New York Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches creative writing at New York University and the Hudson Valley Writers Center.
