It’s Official: Literary “New York Problems” Is a Trend

modern-lovers  The Nest  Fates and Furies

If you’ve heard readers object that they don’t want to read yet another book about the problems of well-off New Yorkers, the Guardian verifies that it’s indeed a trend.

In a new twist, many of these NYC-centric novels are set in the recently trendy borough of Brooklyn. Tellingly, Emma Straub, the author of the Modern Lovers, (PRH/Riverhead), which just debuted at #14 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list, recently told that paper that she set her book in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, because she “wanted to stay as far away from the quote-unquote Brooklyn book as I could,” a fine distinction to those who are’t familiar with the differences of Brooklyn real estate.

The titles cited buy the Guardian as examples represent a range of genres, from Plum Sykes frothy Bergdorf Blondes (2004) to the multiple literary award nominee Hanya Yanagihara’s  A Little Life (2015).

Comments are closed.