After the Fall - Hardcover

Victoria Roberts

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393073556 ISBN 13: 9780393073553

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012

Synopsis

"This is a wonderful, forever book." ―George Booth, cartoonist for The New Yorker

After the Fall introduces us to a brilliantly eccentric family from New York’s Upper East Side. Pops, a self-made millionaire, is a mad inventor who gleans his inspiration from popovers and Raquel Welsh. Mother is a fabulously dressed but mercurial socialite from Buenos Aires whose weapon of choice is a croquet mallet. Young Alan, our earnest and studious narrator, and his drama-queen little sister, Alex, love their parents but must turn to their good-natured housekeeper and cook for a better sense of reality.

One fateful day, Alan returns home to find that the family has gone bust, not even a penny to be found. The next morning, to the children’s surprise, the family wakes up in Central Park along with the entire contents of their penthouse arranged just as before―art, furniture, pugs, and all. Aided by their two loyal housekeepers and fed by the maitre d’ from their favorite restaurant, the family makes Central Park into a comfortable and creative home.

But soon the strains of life―and the weather, which is getting chilly―threaten to tear apart the parents’ marriage. As the holiday season approaches, the children rise to the challenge of bringing their family back together.

With more than two hundred drawings and featuring kimono-clad squirrels and a visit by a Yeti, this delicious tale is a love letter to family, creativity, and New York.

225 illustrations

About this title

About the Author

Victoria Roberts has been a contracted cartoonist for The New Yorker since 1988. Her illustrations have also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

Roberts has been enlivening the pages of the New Yorker since 1988 with her buoyant and fanciful cartoons. In her latest book, she combines her charming drawings and penchant for whimsy with storytelling panache to create a stylish, funny, and sweet illustrated novel about a Fifth Avenue penthouse family fallen on hard times. Pops is a chubby, bespectacled inventor. Mother is a temperamental beauty from Buenos Aires, who fires up Gauloises with insouciance, refusing to use one of Pops’ most successful inventions, the nicotine-free Smokos. When they abruptly find themselves evicted and living in Central Park with their three pugs, Pops, Mother, endearingly serious 10-year-old Alan (our narrator), and little Sis manage to make a lark of it, with the help of their generous household staff, sisters Gudelia and Usvelia. Sis, in fact, thrives, mounting ambitious theatrical productions performed by costumed squirrels. But all their valor and cleverness won’t keep winter at bay. Will Mother abandon them? Will Pops have a brainstorm? Roberts’ playfully funny, elegant picture-book fantasy of love, imagination, and luck is a welcome and delectable diversion. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393073556
• ISBN 13: 9780393073553
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Victoria Roberts
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192