“Best Novels of Fall 2020” —Vogue “Most Anticipated List for Fall 2020” —Parade “Best of Fall 2020” —PopSugar “Best Books of 2020” —Marie Claire From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gossip Girl series, a deliciously irresistible novel chronicling a year in the life of four families in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood as they seek purpose, community, and meaningful … neighborhood as they seek purpose, community, and meaningful relationships—until one unforgettable night at a raucous neighborhood party knocks them to their senses.
Welcome to Cobble Hill.
In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her skateboarding, ex-boyband member husband Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones—everywhere.
A few blocks away, Roy, a well-known, newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to capable, indefatigable Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, the nervous, introverted industrial designer with a warehose full of prosthetic limbs struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife Elizabeth. She remains…elusive. Throw in two hormonal teenagers, a ten-year-old pyromaniac, a drug dealer pretending to be a doctor, and a lot of hidden cameras, and you’ve got a combustible mix of egos, desires, and secrets bubbling in brownstone Brooklyn.
Smart, sophisticated, yet surprisingly tender, Cobble Hill is highly entertaining portrait of contemporary family life and the colorful characters who call Brooklyn home.
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“Cobble Hill” is not in the category of books I usually read, but with the “pandemic” and being stuck at home, I was looking for something different, something fun and easy to read; this certainly fits the bill. The characters are certainly crazy and yet funny and enjoyable. It is a world I certainly do not often visit in my reading, but I enjoyed the diversion. Rich kids in Brooklyn can be compelling and hilarious with their own drama and trauma. Things happen, and I kept reading to find out what might happen next. I laughed, I cringed, and I turned the pages.
I received a review copy of “Cobble Hill” from Cecily von Ziegesar and Atri Books. It was more than I expected, and yet just what I needed to read.
Cecily von Ziegesar’s latest novel is set in a Brooklyn, NY in a neighborhood known as Cobble Hill. It sounds like an artsy neighborhood, and many of the characters are artists of one sort or another—authors, musicians, avant-garde artists. Cobble Hill is more a character study than plot-driven tale. The story line is interesting and leisurely paced.
There is a wide cast of odd characters that I found confusing at first, but within a few chapters the family groupings come together. Each family’s story ranges from quirky to bizarre. Most of the marriages seem dysfunctional with all their secrets and lies, and the kids are not alright!
The individual storylines eventually get woven together as more and more of the characters meet and interact. As they do, the story becomes more intriguing.
I can’t say that I was fond of any of the characters, but I was invested in finding out how this quirky story eventually came together. I can’t explain it, but my favorite part was the illness-faking wife who starts stealing her neighbors’ food-prep, home delivery boxes. Cobble Hill is a weirdly, wonderful story.
When I saw that Cecily von Ziegesar had a new book out. I knew immediately that I had to read it! Cobble Hill is such a fun and unique novel. It follows four families in an upscale neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, who are all figuring out life and forming connections with each other. Such an interesting mix of people and personalities, this story will keep you entertained during your read. I enjoyed these quirky characters, their scandals, and dramatic secrets.
I was delighted to receive the ARC for Cecily von Ziegesar’s upcoming novel, Cobble Hill. I went into this one expecting Gossip Girl for adults, but I found was a more of a neighborhood ensemble novel, like Jonathan Vatner’s Carnegie Hill or Candace Bushnell’s One Fifth Avenue. Cobble Hill’s in Brooklyn, so these neighbors are all in separate houses, not in the same building, creating a wonderfully gossipy, interconnected setting more like in Abbi Waxman’s Other People’s Houses, or Rosie Millard’s The Square. I’m realizing I read this genre a lot, so maybe my next roundup post will be books about neighborhood secrets and affairs.
The characters of Cobble Hill are all a bit over-the-top, in delightfully Brooklyn-creative ways. The novel takes us into four families: a former pop star and his former model wife, a magazine editor (kinda) and her novelist husband, an artist who works in lava and fake blood, a designer who makes, uh, surveillance equipment? creepy manikins? sex toys? all of the above, really. Next to the wealthy creative types are the struggling Brooklyn creatives, a school nurse who’s also a drummer and her music-teacher husband.
I loved how dramatic the secrets were, with spouses pretending to have a debilitating disease, disappearing for months at a time, pretending they haven’t been fired, cheating, stealing, lying, etc., etc. Mandy, an ex-model, feels tired, heavy, and lazy. So tired and lazy that she has a bed moved into their living room, and pretends she’s been diagnosed with MS. Somehow readers are led to this with almost sympathy and understanding for her extreme lie. Of course this is a horrible lie, but haven’t we all said “I think I’m coming down with something” as an excuse to lie in bed and watch trash TV? Somehow, this ridiculous and outrageous lie seems like someone a real person would do.
When Wendy gets abruptly demoted from her upscale magazine editor’s role to a maternity leave coverage on more of a middle-class imprint, she doesn’t mention it to her husband. And she keeps not-mentioning it. Again, we’re somehow led to this massive secret with understanding, it’s barely even lying when her husband Roy doesn’t pay much attention to the things she does say.
In Cobble Hill, British author Roy Clark has written a rainbow of similar novels. Orange is the most popular one, although it seems like no one has ever read it all the way through, not even his wife, Wendy. He’s at work on his new book, Red, or maybe Gold, or maybe Red and Gold, questioning whether his new work — which rambles into questionable sex-in-space scifi pulp territory — is too much of a departure from the rest of the rainbow series. I couldn’t help comparing this to the departure from Gossip Girl and It Girl found here in Cobble Hill.
But it’s not a total departure, is it? Because Gossip Girl begins with a sharp eye for the fashion and customs of a certain group of Manhattanites, and then softly exaggerates the highs and lows, until it’s less a manners novel than a manners fantasy. That’s the feeling in Cobble Hill, too only this time with the focus on Brooklyn creatives instead of prep school heiresses.