The Party Upstairs

By Lee Conell

Penguin Press     2020

320 pages     Literary

Sometimes, I am astounded with the way art imitates life, and vice versa. Such is the case with The Party Upstairs by Lee Conell. It captures the plight of today’s young adults and their parents with a spot-on look at a day in the life of a young Manhattan woman, Ruby and her father, Martin. Ruby is a young liberal arts college graduate who has returned home to live with her parents following a breakup with her boyfriend and an inability to find a well-paying job to pay off her massive college debt.

Martin is the super of an Upper West Side co-op building, close to the Natural History Museum. Like most fathers, he worries constantly about his daughter, even as he has to deal with the mountain of service requests from the building’s residents. He has a real sense of his place in the world and the class disparities that run rampant in a place like Upper West Side Manhattan. He feels a close connection to Lily, a deceased resident who was like a grandmother to Ruby, and Martin’s dearest friend. She continues to guide him in his heart and memory.

Ruby has no real plan for her life, except that she loves dioramas—not a lucrative job choice. She sees her life as a series of dioramas, played out in the apartments of the co-op, particularly in conjunction with her life-long friend, Caroline, who grew up in the penthouse while Ruby grew up in the basement. As a child, she never had a sense of their differences, but now, coming home, she sees life and class disparities rather more clearly. It is like her dioramas, “lovingly crafted, deeply illusory, a lifelike depiction of something already extinct.”

So on this day with Ruby at home for the first time in a long time, Martin goes about his duties worrying about Ruby. She has an interview in the afternoon at the Natural History Museum and is going to Caroline’s penthouse party in the evening. The day begins with an argument between Martin and his daughter, and it  goes downhill for both of them. What the reader views is a lifetime history within one building on one day. As the Kirkus reviewer says, “Conell’s debut perfectly captures the co-op’s ecosystem and the way class informs every interaction, reaction, and relationship inside it.”

This is a remarkable novel, at times poignant, at times very funny, but always relevant and reasonable. It is even more empathetic during these uncertain times, when many young adults have had to return home without jobs, with loads of debt, and no place to live. I was struck by the NY Times News Service article, Welcome to the Museums of Past Selves, in today’s paper (July 19, 2020).  The subtitle reads, “When the pandemic derailed their plans and independence, many young people moved back to their childhood bedrooms, where they have discovered old anxieties and new insights.” This is precisely what has happened to Ruby and Martin in Manhattan, and it happened to my son’s family in Chicago. Having spent the year as empty-nesters, they have had all three children return to them.

The Party Upstairs is the debut novel of Lee Conell. It received several starred reviews and was named “best of summer” on several lists. Here is her website. Read this book; you will love it. And then wait with baited breath for her next book to arrive.