Against a background of ominous "sudden weather" and warnings to "shelter in place," the characters of Kate Walbert's The Sunken Cathedral play out their complicated lives in New York City's ever more expensive Chelsea neighborhood. At the center of Walbert's (A Short History of Women; Our Kind) story are lifelong friends and octogenarians Marie and Simone, haunted by nightmares of their escapes during the Nazi invasion of France. They manage on their own as best they can: their bodies are failing, their children are scattered about the world, their husbands are vivid memories, their storekeeper neighbors are replaced by pampered movie stars, and their big brownstones now broken up for rental income. In counterpoint to these old-school New Yorkers, Marie's tenants Elizabeth and Pete--and teen son, Ben, who has a "constellation of learning challenges formerly known as learning differences formerly known as learning disabilities"--struggle to live up to youthful dreams.
Walbert shapes the lives of these neighbors and friends in jewel-like vignettes, with more information in narrative footnotes. Set in the shadows of the hip High Line with "delivery boys and muscle boys and pretty women who work at magazines weaving in and out of the stalled traffic on CitiBikes" and square in perilous Flood Zone 1, Walbert's taut novel touches on all that is now at risk in the city--whether from a cascade of water or cascade of money. As one of the school's long-time administrators says over a martini in a soon-to-be-closed, smoke-free Chelsea tavern, "Maybe that's the problem now: everyone needs a cigarette." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.