Triburbia

Pitch-perfect, dry, and smart, this is a vivid portrait of New York, our lives, our loves, and our hearts. Susan Orlean, author ofRin Tin TinandThe Orchid ThiefI lovedTriburbia, loved dropping in on these wonderful characters with their outsized appetites and ambitions, the lithe and lively prose, the way the book swirls in and out of these lives and maps perfectly a place and a moment in time. Most of all, though, I loved Karl Taro Greenfelds deft satirical touch, the searing empathy with which he offers up his privileged, damaged people to the world.Jess Walter, author ofBeautiful RuinsKarl Taro Greenfeld, author of the acclaimed memoirBoy Alone, delivers a remarkable first novel about a group of families in a fashionable Manhattan neighborhood wrestling with the dark realities of their lives.Thrown together by circumstance, six fathersa sound engineer, a sculptor, a film producer, a chef, a memoirist, a gangstermeet each morning at a local Tribeca coffee shop after walking their children to their exclusive school. Over the course of a single school year, we are privy to their secrets, passions, and hopes, and learn of their dreams deferred as they confront harsh realities about ambition, wealth, and sex. And we meet their wives and children, who together with these men are discovering the hard truths and welcome surprises that accompany family, marriage, and real estate at midlife.Fascinatingly layered and multidimensional, these linked stories, arranged like puzzle pieces, create a powerful portrait of unlikely friends and their neighborhood in transition. Striking chords that range from haunting and heartbreaking to darkly funny and deeply poignant,Triburbiamarks the start of a brilliant literary career.