Mark Kurlansky, perhaps best known for his impeccably researched nonfiction (Salt, Cod, and The Last Fish Tale), humorously and accurately chronicles the dramatic changes in Manhattan's Upper West Side during the 1980s in his sixth work of fiction, Cheesecake.
This vibrant, funny, and at times bittersweet story unfolds primarily through the eyes of the Katsikas family, who arrive in New York from a "small rock-bound Greek island." Two brothers--Art (born Achilles) and Niki (né Nikodemos)--and Niki's wife, Adara, open (what else?) a Greek diner on the corner of 86th Street and Columbus, and call it Katz Brothers. Although when they first get there, it is "not the best neighborhood," it is "affordable" and has "real potential." Art is the wheeler-dealer; Niki is "the seducer" host; Adara runs the kitchen and raises the goats that produce the diner's cheese at their home in Queens. Art has his eye on buying up real estate up and down the block; this eventually puts him at odds with his longtime diner customers, whose rents he raises.
These regulars add depth and dimension to the novel. Ruth Arnstein hands out treats for local dogs, alms for the street people, and breadcrumbs for the pigeons. Violette, born Veronika Patowski, is captivating; at age 14, while attending a Catholic boarding school, she decides "Bodies were made to be seen. Otherwise, why have them?" and promptly runs away to New York. She changes her name to Violette de Lussac and her age to 23, goes to work as an artist's model for Guy Witman and then marries him. Mimi Landau, a "long-established Upper West Sider" and former pastry-maker, knows that the Katsikas brothers are interested in buildings like hers, and recognizes that "they were the enemy." Cato is her beloved black standard poodle and happens to share a name with the author of the first recorded cheesecake recipe. Several of the novel's characters attempt this recipe, with comedic results. Kurlansky endows Mimi with a wonderful wit--the "pleasant-looking Greeks" remind her of a Baudelaire line: "Where evil comes up softly like a flower." Art's rent hike forces her to move to Hoboken, N.J. But Mimi's old friend Gerta has a proposal that could bring her back (at least business-wise) to West 86th Street and restore its karma.
Longtime New Yorkers may feel wistful for a bygone neighborhood so lovingly rendered in Kurlansky's portrait of family-run bakeries, boutiques, and Barney Greengrass (still there); and others will enjoy this glimpse of a small town within a metropolis. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: Mark Kurlansky lends his considerable skills to this loving tribute to Manhattan's Upper West Side during the booming 1980s.