Introduction

Eighties New York springs to gritty, vibrant life in this piercingly romantic and compulsively readable coming-of-age novel. A beautiful, sad, funny, altogether bewitching debut

Francesca "Chess" Varani is an ultra-bright, sassy, but vulnerable Barnard freshwoman from a blue-collar background in the vibrantly gritty New York City of the mid-eighties. She strikes up a volatile and somewhat toxic friendship with drama-queen classmate Kendra Marr-Löwenstein, and falls into the bewitching orbit of her Salingeresque, high-toned family. Upon graduation, she moves into the Marr-Löwenstein house in the West Village as a secretary/girl-of-all-work to the soignèe literary intellectual Clarice Marr (think Susan Sontag but blondly coiffed and dressed in Chanel) and receives the sentimental education and emotional roughing up New York bestows on all of its new arrivals—including a love affair with Clarice's glamorously damaged son, Jerry.The story is related by Chess in sadder but wiser fashion from the distance of a financially beset 2008 and the depths of a crap job taken of necessity, tinged with the poignancy of time and choices made and not made.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2017: B.G. Firmani’s debut novel reads like a time capsule. Her protagonist is Chess, a Barnard student who eventually lands a job working as an assistant in the West Village for a member of the wealthy Marr-Lowenstein family. Chess’s experience will resonate with anyone who has loved reading Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Donna Tartt, Garth Risk Hallberg, or even J.D. Salinger—with the added touch that she is looking back on her early New York days from twenty years later, even as she describes it in vivid detail. This is a time and a place and an age that resonates with many, whether they’ve lived it themselves or just enjoy reading from the rich tradition of novels about coming of age in New York. --Chris Schluep, The Amazon Book Review

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