Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat

by Adam Langer

Book Overview

The author of Crossing California now delivers this ode to New York: the story of why people come to a city they can't afford, take jobs they despise, sacrifice love, find love, and eventually become... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385522053
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.7" x 1.1" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

An ode to New York and the people who live there

A 40 year old ex clarinet player gets threatened with eviction from his Manhattan Valley apartment along with his dog. The rest of book follows along with his trials and travails along with those of all the participants in this "real-estate" play. The technique of using acts of a play is a little kitschy but the writing is smart and the characters are well drawn. The novel is well-paced but the characters, though "smartly" developed, could have been even more fleshed out. The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because it annoyed me that by the end of the book my favorite character hands down was the dog, Herbie Mann, and not either of the main characters, Ike and Rebecca.

Quirky characters in ultra expensive Manhattan

I had recently read an article in the New York Times about about a young playwright who lived in 30 apartments in 20 years in Manhattan. I know this playwright and found the article exotic and gave me a bird's eye view of how much money New Yorkers spend on a few hundred square feet of living space. When I started reading this book, Ike Morphy, a musician returns to his rented New York apartment only to learn that his inexpensive rental apartment has gone condo and selling for $650,000. It's a small apartment in a renovated area. Adam Langer weaves a superb tale of New York with fascinating characters: the mortgage broker, the buyer, the seller and auxillary characters who add to the exciting mix. Combining academia, magazine politics, musicians, and most important, real estate razzle dazzle and then the bubble. The book reminded me of the movies Babel and Crash; the characters' lives eventually intertwine and serve up a big impact to the plot. There are likeable and non-likeable characters: Darrell Schiff who is blatantly self-serving and obnoxious, Mark Masler, a womanizer, ex-alcoholic and observant Jew, who inherited his father's real estate but not his benevolence, and Herbie Mann, a dog, aka Lucky, who belogned to Chloe, who typifies the worst of magazine industry. Herbie Mann belongs to Ike the musician who is in love with Rebecca, Darrell's wife. Oh, and there are a pair of pigeons who roost outside the apartment/condo. The novel is humorous and smart; the characters turn out to be the people they never thought they could become.

Very funny and very Manhattan

Really enjoyed this novel - and as someone who has gone through the process of purchasing an apartment in Manhattan I'm not surprised that Langer was able to create a funny and insightful novel out of this source material. Ellington Boulevard is a wonderful novel about the warfare involved in acquiring property in New York City. What I liked most about this book was the myriad of characters with all of their faults lovingly laid out and intersecting. The themes of music and musical comedy throughout are also very engaging. Overall, a fun and insightful read that gives the reader a beautiful picture of Manhattan.

Another literary triumph for Adam Langer.

When I heard Adam Langer was writing a third novel, I hoped it would be a continuation of the wonderful characters we met in Crossing California and Washington Story. Those books ended in the 1980's and I have wondered how they would "age". Well, Langer moved his fiction from Chicago to New York, and introduced us to a new crew of characters, who interact around an apartment on the Upper-Upper West Side. And, "interact" they do. One of the joys of a Langer novel is the intersection - often in odd ways - of various characters. The first reader review of the novel gives a better description of the book than I can here. Though ALL the writing is fine, I'd like to praise Langer's portrayal of "Herbie Mann", Ike's dog. The last chapter - The Life of Mann - almost had me in tears with it's brilliance. Thanks, Adam, for another glorious read.

The four-ring circus of New York captured in a novel

Novelist Adam Langer arrived onto the literary scene with a bang a few years ago with "Crossing California," a novel about a gaggle of precocious yet sensitive teens growing up in Chicago during the waning years of the 1970's. Langer's first novel drew raves from critics across the country for his masterful blending of description (micro-precise); rhythm (alternately fast and slow); era-catching (bringing back the 1970's as though with his own 70-millimeter Technicolor film with Surround-Sound and disco balls); and comedy (laugh-out-loud...and I REALLY mean laugh-out-loud!). Now we have "Ellington Boulevard," a witty, clever, and multi-charactered romp through the New York City real-estate world set in the present day. But Langer doesn't take the easy way out. It's actually a novel disguised as a musical. In other words, the author draws from two mediums (literature and musical comedy) to roll out a witty, up-and-down, where's-this-going-to-end-up tour through the Gotham City real estate scene. Making it all the more clever is that--in this Marx Brothers-like dash through New York City's neighborhoods--a single apartment (with a rich history that is unknown to the characters but known to the reader) serves as the anchor to all the dashing around it. As in his previous work, Langer returns with lots of likeable, fun-to-follow characters, sharp dialogues, enough ribaldry to make Ned Flanders blush, and all manner of humor. Sometimes the characters themselves know they're being funny and we laugh with them, and sometimes we laugh while the characters themselves aren't in on the joke. "Ellison Boulevard" reads a bit like the stringing together of the five best "Seinfeld" episodes ever, while looping in maybe 20 minutes of "The French Connection" and 5 minutes from "Serpico." Langer's writing is so clever and page-turning that it feels more like you're watching things develop, then explode, rather than sitting with a novel in your hand reading. Chalk up another supremely creative and witty novel for Mr. Langer.