Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music.
Set in the summer of 1988 when both Michael Dukakis and the New York Mets seemed destined for triumph but instead disintegrate, life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels beyond his rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side neighborhood. Between paralyzing bouts of claustrophobia, Nathan wonders whether to cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry makers whose parents may or may not have been Nazis. His father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighborhood. With its cast of vivid characters, this is comedy of cultures, of the old and the new, of Latinos, Jews, Sicilians and Germans. It is about struggling to hold on to life in a rapidly changing world, about food, sex, and how our lives are shaped by love and Guilt.
Where to Buy
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Hardcover
Ballantine Books, 2005
ISBN: 978-0345448187
Other Editions
Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music.
eBook
Random House Publishing Group, 2005
ISBN: 9780345482174
Reviews
“By blending warm social comedy, period detail and perceptive psychology, Kurlansky, who writes from the heart and taste-buds….suggests that survival lies in an innate human capacity for reinvention.”
The London Literary
“Alternately sociological and silly, Boogaloo is a hit.” Illustrated by the author with pen and brush drawings.
The Washington Post