Between Two Rivers - Hardcover

Nicholas Rinaldi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593051963 ISBN 13: 9780593051962

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2004

Synopsis

Farro Fescu, concierge, janitor, general factoturn, oversees the lives of the residents of Echo Terrace, collecting their mail, organising their taxis, fixing problems with their apartments. There is Nora Abernooth, who lives with a menagerie of birds, snakes and monkeys who provide much-needed company since the death of her husband. In the penthouse is Harry Falcon, multimillionaire and founder of the country's biggest frozen-food company, who is slowly dying of cancer. In the Harry Houdini suite is Dr Tattafruge, cosmetic surgeon to the stars and specialist in sex change operations. Maggie Sowle lives a quiet life in the Helen Keller apartment, sewing quilts that will hang in galleries around the world. Abdul Saad is a young Muslim making his way in the mortuary business, still living at home with his parents but dreaming of a better life and of the woman he loves. Karl Vogel sits in his apartment, surrounded by walls painted blue to remind him of the skies he used to fly through as a Luftwaffe ace back in the bad old days. And of course, Luther Rumfarm, making more and more money on the bond market and, not so quietly, buying up all the apartments he can. Farro Fescu watches the

About this title

About the Author:

Nicholas Rinaldi teaches at Fairfield University, in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife, Jackie. His work includes two novels, Bridge Fall Down and The Jukebox Queen of Malta, and three collections of poetry: The Resurrection of the Snails, The Luftwaffe in Chaos and We Have Lost Our Fathers.

From Publishers Weekly:

Intertwining stories by the author of The Jukebox Queen of Malta offer subtle portraits of the residents of Echo Terrace, a fictitious Battery Park building in which the condominiums are named after the likes of Mae West, Susan B. Anthony and Grandma Moses. At the book's center is the inimitable Romanian concierge, Farro Fescu, who watches with keen eyes the comings and goings of the intriguing inhabitants, including Karl Vogel, a Luftwaffe pilot engaged in an affair with a journalist whose grandfather was killed by a Nazi fighter pilot ("She is making peace with the enemy," Karl thinks); Yesenia, a captivating 19-year-old housemaid who is brutally raped on the way home to her Queens apartment; and Theo, a plastic surgeon who falls for a widow whose husband admitted to an affair and shortly thereafter died of a heart attack. Devastated, the woman, Nora, poisons her exotic pets ("Whatever I love, I make it die") and then walks into traffic. With Nora in a coma, her young actress niece, Angela, moves into her apartment and enters into an unlikely affair with a poem-quoting undertaker who is convinced that love can conquer all. Among a few bizarre twists, a young designer falls (or is pushed) from a window, and Theo is drafted by the FBI to perform a sex-change operation on one of Augusto Pinochet's collaborators. These are complex, moving stories without straightforward resolutions-as one character remarks, "Life is heavy, it weighs"-and if they feel a bit overwritten sometimes, Rinaldi compensates for this with multifaceted and memorable characters.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0593051963
• ISBN 13: 9780593051962
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432