A Disorder Peculiar to the Country

April 3, 2006
It's a familiar New York story: Joyce and Marshall Harriman's divorce battle escalates from a skirmish to a full-fledged territorial conflict, as both sue for custody of their coveted Brooklyn Heights co-op, and consequently they must both continue to inhabit it—along with their two small children, "their divorce's civilian casualties." Minor acts of domestic terrorism have become an unavoidable part of their daily lives, so when September 11 happens, neither is immediately very jarred. In fact, each thinks the other dead, and celebrates. Far from putting things into perspective, the tragedy and aftermath become a queasily hilarious counterpoint to the ongoing war to divide Joyce and Marshall's assets. Their pettiness reaches continuously lower depths – spying, psychological warfare and even anthrax comes into play. Joyce seduces Marshall's best friend, and Marshall sabotages Joyce's sister's wedding. The Harrimans enact the country's problems on their pathetically personal scale, but the novel miraculously manages to avoid patness or bombast. As in Jay McInerney's recent The Good Life
, Kalfus puts 9/11 up against the steel-plated narcissism of New Yorkers—with very different, and very funny, results.

August 27, 2007
Kalfus's novel of post-9/11 anomie and family disintegration is barbed with hidden punch lines and embedded pockets of horror-clad humor. The tangled, slow-motion journey toward divorce of a harried, bitter upper-middle-class New York couple unfolds in the midst of a city under siege, during a time of catastrophic political and social upheaval. Respecting the nature of Kalfus's novel, Boles treads carefully and lightly. He rarely interferes in the hurtling motion of Kalfus's prose, studded as it is with asides and stray thoughts, preferring instead to stand back and allow the words room to breathe. Reading in a detached, polite manner, he grants Marshall and Joyce the opportunity to hang themselves with their own words, knowing they will need no assistance whatsoever from his performance. A simultaneous release with the Ecco hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 3).