NP. Anniversaries. If interested.

[Mark Kohut]

The protagonist of Anniversaries keeps a diary. In it she records and
comments on national and international
events reported in the New York Times, which she reads every day. Along
with journalizing her personal life. She came with her daughter
to NYC in the early sixties. In nice folded-in backstory-telling, we learn
of that daughter then--so fully opposed to being in the US
she acts out in many ways. She even feels that the food in NYC tastes bad
because not home.

Then in the novel's present, 1967--1968---once again, real artists can feel
the value of the times they choose in advance--: we see how changed this
girl now is.

We learn of Gesine Crespahl's hunt for an apartment when they first got to
NYC. Lots of detail on that constant NY subject,--a whole novel written
about it once--
chasing an apartment, a condo, etc. including the attraction of Riverside
Drive and its park, green and a view and access to the Hudson,
morning fog and Jersey across the river--Johnson writes this detail so
well; I'm just prosaic here--He gives further along a fine, fine history of
Riverside Drive--a whole novel once written with THAT title, which I've
even read---and the park. That view meant to be of New Jersey cliffs and
wilds--then
industry moved in.

And we learn how she finds a place on the same Riverside Drive about 10 to
14 blocks north of where Maxine Tarnow and kids (and Tom and Melanie) live.
She gets a deal, $124 mo from two stewardesses (!!), who want to leave
everything because they are moving to Europe for "just a year" and they
like her/them. But, of course, it is seven years later and they never came
back.

Juxtaposed in the book's present are the daily war deaths; the daily
political decisions that hide the truth--with the occasional story of the
government
official who does risk saying out loud " we can't bomb the North Vietnamese
to the negotiating table, etc."

And other stories, with US race relations and the anti-Semitism of the time
an early embedded wallpaper-like subject and some kind of Nazi aftereffects
thread--in reporting from Europe, of course and in the US where a Nazi
shoots his Party leader and it is all over the paper. And the follow-up
stories of where his body is refused burial.

I love this structure; I love the history of History written down as well
as Ms Crespahl's and her daughter's history in NYC. .  One feels as one
does when one does start the day with newspaper facts and stories and then
one's life happens. (And Johnson also has family history from
Europe folded in, always through characters, real human beings, smoothly
interlaced).

The texture of life and history.

I recommend this book to all. (Easy to do since it has long been called a
masterpiece)

Me