Better Homes and Husbands

This book has many lovely layers— first, Valerie's Leff's subtle, intellectual, slightly dark humor had me laughing out loud often and crying on the last page. I wanted to talk about these characters in a book club and wished for a sequel so that I could find out what they do next...Next, Leff incor......more

Terrific social satire about the residents of one very exclusive Manhattan apartment building -- so exclusive, in fact, that members of the board of the co-op are getting into trouble. I loved how the book moved from one apartment's family to another, as if I were riding up and down the elevator and......more

Very good book, chronicling 3 decades of life in the same Park Place apartment, in vignettes told by various inhabitants/employees. Author's writing is unadorned, simple and clear, and captures the scenes of the characters' lives very well. My first book of a Manhattan insider writing about contempo......more

I thought this would be summer fluff and chose it for that reason, but it was actually a well-written social commentary on New York's Upper East Side during the last 50 years. Class issues, antisemitism are themes.......more

i think any one of the chapters of this book could be made into it's own novel. That being said, each time I became interested in how a character felt, or relates to the others in the novel, I felt disappointed in that the next page would start up with a new person, a new perspective, and a new twis......more