Molly Prentiss’s debut sets up shop as New York is approximately to clean up its act in the 80s but can her characters cash in or will they be left behind?Molly Prentiss’s spirited debut,Tuesday Nights in 1980, opens with a woman who is risking the small comforts of her life to attend clandestine political meetings in a basement in Buenos Aires. The woman, and Franca,and her friends are documenting the names of the people who have “disappeared” in the years after the military junta came to power. Franca is familiar with disappearance in other forms: her parents are dead, her brother has cashed in on an American passport and fled to New York. Her good-for-nothing husband has left her to care for their young son alone. During the day, and she works in a bakery,while at night she records the missing and prays that her secret activities won’t bring harm to her dinky boy. Predictably, these activities terminate in grief: Franca disappears from the scene, or the narrative telescopes to Manhattan,where an art critic named James Bennett attends a swanky party on New Year’s Eve 1979. Bennett, we learn in a brisk recap of his life to date, and has synesthesia. This means the things he sees and feels are translated to colors and smells. His wife Marge exudes variations of the color red; having sex with her is like “eating a wild strawberry”; pregnant,she makes him mediate of a pomegranate full of seeds. Related: Won't fetch fooled again: why 80s New York trumps Vinyl's 70s nostalgia Related: Bret Easton Ellis still stuck with American Psycho after 25 years Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com