Summary
Summary
A "captivating, perceptive, and empathic novel of New York" told with "panache and mischievous ebullience" ( Booklist , starred review).
In this retelling of Balzac's Parisian classic Cousin Bette, Sarah Shulman spins her revenge story in Mad Men- era New York City. Bette, a lonely spinster, has worked as a secretary at an ad agency for thirty years. Her only real friend is her apartment neighbor Earl, a black, gay actor with a miserable job in a meatpacking plant. Shamed and disowned by their families, both find refuge in New York and in their friendship.
Everything changes when Hortense, Bette's wealthy niece from Ohio, moves to the city to pursue her own acting career. Her arrival reminds Bette of her scandalous past and the estranged Midwestern family she left behind. When Hortense's calculating ambitions cause a rift between Bette and Earl, Bette uses her connections in the television ad world to destroy those who have wronged her.
Textured with the grit and gloss of midcentury Manhattan in the days before the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, The Cosmopolitans "balance[s] the hopes of an entire era on the backs of a fragile relationship. . . . Jarring and beautiful, this is a modern classic" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Author Notes
Sarah Schulman's love of New York is evident in The Cosmopolitans, her 9th novel and 16th book. Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, her honors and awards include a Guggenheim in Playwriting and a Fulbright in Judaic Studies. A well known literary chronicler of the marginalized and subcultural, Sarah's fiction has focused on queer urban life for thirty years. Her nonfiction includes The Gentrification of The Mind, a memoir of the homogenization of her city in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Her plays and films have been seen at Playwrights Horizons, The Berlin Film Festival and The Museum of Modern Art. An AIDS historian, Sarah is co-founder of the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace and is faculty advisor to Students for Justice in Palestine at the College of Staten Island.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Prolific author and gay rights and AIDS activist Schulman, recipient of a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, and two ALA Stonewall Book Awards, is dedicated to telling stories of the discriminated against, the marginalized, and the overlooked. She is also steeped in literature, including the work of Balzac, from whom she ever so neatly, cleverly, and purposefully lifted the plot and characters for this delectable, mid-twentieth-century New York version of his Parisian classic, Cousin Bette. Balzac's tale of rejection and revenge begins on a busy Paris street in July 1838. Schulman's piercing, archly stylized novel of betrayal and vengeance begins on a lively block in Greenwich Village in July 1958. Bette has been in exile from her Ohio home and family for three decades, working as a secretary at an advertising agency, first for the founder, now for his timid son, Hector. She has learned to cherish solitude, but is happiest sharing dinner with her only friend, her neighbor, Earl. Also in his fifties, he is African American, gay, and a long-struggling actor with a miserable day job in a slaughterhouse. Both have suffered scarring heartbreak, but unlike Bette, who cherishes their platonic intimacy, Earl hasn't given up on love. Enter Hortense, Bette's young, rich, naïve, and ambitious cousin, who has escaped Ohio to study acting. And Valerie, a sexy, tough, and manipulative consultant who lures Hector and Bette into an uncharted new world: television advertising. Writing with the same panache and mischievous ebullience as the authors who are retelling Shakespeare plays in the Hogarth series, including Margaret Atwood and Anne Tyler, Schulman not only incisively revamps Balzac's drama, she also summons the exquisite psychological nuances of Henry James, the daringly forthright novels of James Baldwin, and the milieu of Mad Men. As she orchestrates an escalating sequence of vicious schemes, cons, and double-crosses of breathtaking desperation, cruelty, and self-justification, Schulman takes precise and revealing measure of prejudice, mendacity, fear, and greed, creating a captivating, perceptive, and empathic novel of New York on the brink of the first stirrings of the civil rights and women's movements.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Midwesterner Bette fled Ohio after her lover, Frederick, broke her heart when she was 20 years old. Thirty years later, middle-aged Bette is living in Greenwich Village and still hoping to reconcile with Frederick. It's 1958, and the village is home to a mix of working-class and bohemian residents. Bette lives a quiet life, working as a secretary and spending her evenings reading, talking, and listening to jazz with her neighbor and only friend, Earl. Earl is a 50-year-old gay African American actor with a day job in a slaughterhouse. While Bette is resigned to her solitude, Earl still hopes to find love. The novel takes a dramatic turn with the arrival of Bette's cousin Hortense. An aspiring actress, Hortense left Ohio after discovering that her father, Frederick (yes, Bette's Frederick), was having an affair. -VERDICT The novel is written in a stilted style Schulman describes as "Britishized American English" that is used to disrupt the false neutrality of contemporary literary fiction. Both the author's subjects and style exist outside of the dominant narratives of U.S. literature and will appeal to readers of contemporary literary fiction looking for something new.-Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.