Why We Came to the City

January 11, 2016
Jansma's compelling paean to New York City features a group of post-college friends who manage the vagaries of love and friendship against the backdrop of living in the big city: opportunity, stress, beauty, as well as the allure of the über rich juxtaposed against the impoverished. The cast includes Irene Richmond, an artist supporting her craft by working at a hip art gallery; George Murphy, an astronomer whose life research may be imploding; his college girlfriend and soon to be wife, Sara Sherman, an editor for a paper; William Cho, working in investments, living with his mother, and harboring a crush on Irene; and Jacob Blaumann, the quintessential graduate not living up to his potentialâhaving made his mark as a poet, but working as an orderly at a mental health facility in the suburbs and having an affair with his boss. Underneath the interactions between the characters lurks an examination of relationships and the ways friendship is tested when one in their midst is beset by a rare form of cancer. Steering clear of the maudlin, the author gives searing portrayals of both challenging cancer treatment and how true friends rise to the occasion when necessary. Jansma (The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards) pens a tightly-written, smartly conceived story that puts an insightful spin on life in the Big Apple.

February 1, 2016

In this sprawling novel by the author of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, five twentysomethings come of age in contemporary New York City, realizing, in one character's own words, that they "are not special." But they are special, young people of privilege and Cornell University grads with great jobs: William's in finance; Sara's an editor; her fiance, George, is an astrophysicist; Irene is an artist; and Jacob is a poet. OK, Jacob is a psychiatric aide since there's no money in poetry, and Irene is a gofer in a gallery, but at least she has benefits. And they all pull together for her when she gets cancer. VERDICT This hefty novel, with its multiple characters and shifting relationships, is the kind that book clubs will love, although character development isn't really its long suit; too often, it relies on cumbersome lists of individuals' quirky behaviors. Perhaps the most refined character is the city itself, evoked throughout in descriptions of side streets, bars, clubs, hotels, and galleries and in three exceptional and beautifully compact chapters, written in Joshua Ferris-esque, first-person plural prose, that get at the heart of what it's like to be young and alive in the big city. [See Prepub Alert, 8/31/15.]--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

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