The New Yorkers (Cathleen Schine, 2007)Several years back, I read Cathleen Schine's The Love Letter. I remember liking it, but most of the details escape me now. Of course I remember the love letter the woman found in a book and the affair she has with a very young man, but I don't really remember the tone of the book or the quality of Schine's writing. My lingering impression was that it was chick lit, light and easy.
I thought The New Yorkers would be similar. The conceit, characters linked together through their dogs, was appealing. I was expecting more chick lit, but that's not what I got. The (human) characters are all lonely and fragile, lacking many firm connections to other people. I felt for them even though I didn't really like any of them very much, but it was wearing to keep reading through their sadness. The tenuous connections the characters make with one another are interesting--some grow stronger and some break completely.
These relationships brought back memories of my neighborhood on Capitol Hill, where I knew people on sight, and even talked to them regularly, but we hardly ever even exchanged names. I guess that kind of acquaintance is a pretty urban phenomenon, but probably more so in certain cities. The dogs in the story really add another layer of authenticity. I can't count the number of times I knew a person and his dog by sight, but we only ever introduced the dogs by name.
