Reviewed by Alec Appelbaum and Dorn Townsend
A common recent complaint about Manhattan is that the economic boom that has hoisted property
values in Manhattan has also dashed its vitality. Whereas neighborhoods like Soho and the Upper West Side were once hotbeds of creative inventiveness and passion, these days the high costs of real estate have shut out the kind of diversity that once gave character to these areas. For many new arrivals in Manhattan, the struggle to make ends meet is heartbreaking — especially for new residents with artistic ambitions but without rent-controlled apartments or indulgent parents.
To varying degrees, this brooding about real estate infects everyone in “Ellington Boulevard,” Adam Langer’s rollicking third novel. (The book’s title alludes to West 106th Street and the Manhattan Valley neighborhood where most of the book’s action unfolds.)
“Ellington Boulevard” isn’t the first New York City novel to make property concerns a theme. Few works of fiction, though, have so focused on real estate.
Property angst takes hold of every character in this novel: A jazz clarinetist has to confront his past when his rent-stabilized walk-up is sold. The talents of a young writer are immobilized when she stays in her childhood home. The decision to buy a condo tips the balance in a newly married couple’s relationship. The loutish son of a saintly landlord tries to use inherited properties to reinvent himself as a business success. To pay his bills, an aspiring actor becomes a broker, a job he initially disdains but comes to master.
As a result of its themes, real estate pros will find much in this novel with which to relate. The city’s rent-control laws, for instance, receive a drubbing. It’s no accident that artistic growth halts for the two characters who enjoy rent-controlled apartments; their creativity atrophies at nearly the same moment that their generous leases are signed.
For a book that takes on Manhattan real estate, a number of setbacks surface. For instance, the only apartment that gets sold is a two-bedroom unit on West 106th Street. Langer strains credulity by asking readers to believe that this bargain-priced apartment could sit on the market for months, attracting only one bidder.
Another false note is the sometimes negative depictions of the city’s real estate pros. While much of the novel’s action pivots on real-estate concerns, property professionals come off as overly barracuda-like. Josh, the broker, “greases supers, scours the daily papers for obituaries, swoops down upon recent crime victims — if living in the city is getting too tough for them, he says, now would be a perfect time to sell.”
Despite these shortcomings, there is much to enjoy in this book. The writing is brisk and graciously captures the concerns of the city’s Craigslist generation. Broad subplots manage to skewer the city’s publishing and theater communities, while liberal arts graduate students come off as less-than-desirable tenants.
For all of Langer’s rhapsodic and easy-going prose, the book makes some penetrating observations. The anxiety of the characters in “Ellington Boulevard” is not just about being able to pay their rent or mortgage: It’s about having one’s creative years frittered away by an overheated property market. Yet even as rising property values challenge his characters, those price pressures can’t knock out their spirits.
An excerpt on how to be a successful New York City broker:
“In college, Joshua had always approached every directing and acting gig, no matter how seemingly trivial, with a focus and an attention to detail so intense that many actors and designers refused to work with him afterward. His approach to real estate was equally obsessive. He read the Post’s real estate section on Thursday, Newsday’s and the Times’ on the weekend; he pored over every word of Crain’s New York Business, Real Estate Weekly, The Real Deal and Curbed.com. He attended open houses five days a week. He arrived early and stayed late at every class and tutoring session offered by the Manhattan Real Estate Professional School on 32nd Street, and listened to every broker’s recruitment pitch, ultimately declining six job offers because he had committed to work for Brad Overman.