Nine stories about a group of eccentric New York residents follow the experiences of young Davie Birnbaum and his witness to the unfolding lives of his fellow tenants, an elderly man aging in reverse, a man who abandons his family to spy on them, and more. A first collection. 20,000 first printing.
This Brilliantly Inventive first collection captures the disparate lives of the residents of Manhattan's West 89th Street. Five stories are set in one apartment building, where young Davie Birnbaum watches his neighbors' lives unfold. The title story reworks F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, " whose hero is born as an old man and ages in reverse; Brownstein's Button lives on the third floor, fading away toward infancy. In apartment 7E, a lawyer named Zauberman reenacts the life of Hawthorne's Wakefield: he abandons his family so that he can spy on them. Meanwhile, the proctologist in the penthouse plays Icarus and Daedalus with his misfit son.
These are tales of literary voyeurism, as the narrators look in on other people's everyday victories and misfortunes -- marriages, car accidents, love affairs, and adoptions -- and make sense of what they see by thinking about the stories they know best.