manhattan beach by jennifer egan summary

So reading about art critic James Bennett’s collection was practically mouth-watering. I have loved browsing galleries in Paris, art markets in Bali, and glassware shops in Venice. When traveling (…remember traveling?), I made it a point to pick up a piece of art in whatever city or country I was visiting. Set in 1980 (…obviously)-before downtown Manhattan was gentrified, before the AIDS crisis decimated communities-this novel is a gorgeous artistic piece centered on the New York City art scene.Īlthough I don’t know a ton about modern art, I would say my own artistic interests have definitely developed a bit more over the past few years. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason-a small town beauty and Raul's muse-and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they've lost.Īs inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Publisher Synopsis: A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way-and ultimately collide-amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s. “Tuesday Nights in 1980” by Molly Prentiss

Manhattan beach by jennifer egan summary