Books set in New York – The Believers by Zoe Heller
The Believers by Zoe Heller
I just finished The Believers by Zoe Heller. Most of the book is set in New York City. This was interesting to me because I am fairly sure that Zoe Heller is British. I always think it is interesting to see how people from other countries view New York.
Zoe Heller’s characters in The Believers seemed to fit right in. They were a diverse, but very liberal family residing in New York. The father, Joel, is a well-known attorney who suffers a stroke at the beginning of the book. The rest of the book addresses how the family deals with this and reveals a few secrets as well. I thought the characters were very realistic and I could see them interacting on the streets of New York.
Ms. Heller had some excellent descriptions of the City that might get you out and about as well. Here is a quote for you: “The sun, swaddled in luminous orange and pink cloudbanks, had begun to set over Jersey City, and all along the divider of the West Side Highway, spindly young trees in metal calipers were waging their frothy blossoms at the passing traffic. Audrey smiled. Long ago, when she had first come to New York, she had been too absorbed by the city’s dank melodrama to notice pockets of prettiness like this. Back then, the allure of the city had lain entirely in its capacity to intimidate her – in its steaming black streets and dank subways. But the noirish metropolis of her youth had softened and shrunk with use: now, forty years on, it had become a place of sunsets and magnolia trees.”
The book kept me very entertained and I would recommend it!
