The Party Upstairs
Lee Conell, 2020
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984880277
Summary
An electrifying debut novel that unfolds in the course of a single day inside one genteel New York City apartment building, as tensions between the building's super and his grown-up daughter spark a crisis that will, by day's end, change everything.
Ruby has a strange relationship to privilege. She grew up the super's daughter in the basement of an Upper West Side co-op that gets more gentrified with each passing year.
Though not economically privileged herself, her close childhood friendship with Caroline, the daughter of affluent tenants, and the mere fact of living in such a wealthy neighborhood, close to her beloved Natural History Museum, brought her certain advantages, even expectations.
Naturally Ruby followed her dreams and took out loans to attend a prestigious small liberal arts college and explore her interest in art.
But now, out of school for a while, she is no closer to her dream job, or anything resembling it, and she's been forced by circumstances to do the last thing she wanted to do: move back in with her parents, back into the basement.
And Caroline is throwing one of her parties tonight, in her father's glorious penthouse apartment, a party Ruby looks forward to and dreads in equal measure.
With a thriller's narrative control, The Party Upstairs distills worlds of wisdom about families, great expectations, and the hidden violence of class into the gripping, darkly witty story of a single fateful day inside the Manhattan co-op Ruby calls home.
Told from the alternating points of view of Ruby and her father, the novel builds from the spark of an early morning argument between them to the ultimate conflagration to which it leads by day's end. By the time the ashes have cooled, the façade that masks the building's power structure will have burned away, and no party will be left unscathed. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Lee Conell is the author of the story collection Subcortical, which was awarded The Story Prize's Spotlight Award. Her short fiction has received the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award and appears in the Oxford American, Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.
She is the recipient of creative writing fellowships from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Conell, who won the Nelson Algren Literary Award for short fiction in 2016, ignites this suspenseful novel, taking place over a single day, with a passion, psychological insight, and a keen sensibility about class and economic difference
National Book Review
The Party Upstairs brings… Connell’s perceptive observation of how class and politics plays out in the real world, behind the metal chain securing an apartment door.
The Millions
Lee Conell has a keen eye for the grand delusions and small daily hypocrisies of a "classless" America…. [B]risk, canny fun—an upstairs-downstairs for the modern age.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review) Conell’s smashing debut creates a vivacious microcosm of life inside a tony Manhattan co-op building…. Conell’s talent for storytelling, wicked sense of humor, and compassion for her characters will leave readers eager for her next book.
Publishers Weekly
The Party Upstairs will make you laugh even as you grapple with how money defines many of its characters’ most significant choices.… [A]n on-the-nose, of-the-moment dark comedy that delves deep into issues of wealth, gender and privilege in the most iconic of American cities.
BookPage
Conell’s debut perfectly captures the… ways class informs every interaction, reaction, and relationship inside it.… [Her] writing remains cleareyed, darkly funny, and deeply empathetic. A slow-burning debut that keenly dissects privilege, power, and the devastation of unfulfilled expectations.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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