The Revolution of Every Day

July 8, 2013
The appeal of squatters in lower Manhattan making their last stand against Giuliani will be apparent to anyone currently paying rent in New York County, but there’s little more than ’90s nostalgia at play in Luna’s debut novel. Not that the residents of Thirteen House are models of DIY bliss: the tenement’s heart and soul are the ex-junkie runaway, Amelia, and Gerrit, the partially deformed Dutch immigrant whose passion is rehabilitation—of electronics, old bikes and Amelia herself. With eviction imminent, Thirteen House’s only ally is Cat House, named both for Cat, a faded scene queen, and the many felines she adopts. Other strays include Steve, the father of Amelia’s baby, and his long-suffering wife, Anne. Not surprisingly, interpersonal politics are emphasized over the gentrification narrative, and a gloomy inevitability shadows the proceedings. “A life without constraints—that had been the goal,” but these squatters’ best days are clearly behind them. This novel gets points for not being Rent, but as a portrait of an era, it’s still a romantic simplification populated by caricatures: the wasted punk-naïf, the disfigured father figure, the damaged matriarch. There’s no revolution to be found in this novel, which feels far too prefab.

September 15, 2013
Luna's debut novel, about the lives of homesteaders who occupy abandoned tenements in New York's Lower East Side, is an unvarnished glimpse into a fringe sector of society during the latter part of the 20th century. The occupants of Thirteen House are NYC's invisible people, imperfect and damaged, who nevertheless strive to maintain the community and families they've created. Philandering husband Steve, who opened the building in the 1980s, professes to love his wife, Anne, and wants to protect her; but Anne becomes increasingly distant and resentful. The product of a middle-class upbringing, she's suffered four miscarriages and has nothing to show for her years of marriage, especially when she compares her life with her sister's. Dutch-born Gerrit, a veteran homesteader and Steve's best friend, is ashamed of his physical deficiencies and past decisions; but he's consumed with love for young Amelia, the former junkie/runaway whom he rescued from the streets seven years ago. Amelia's now pregnant--though not with Gerrit's child--and she's worried about her future and the looming decisions she must make. Steve's first love, Cat, lives in neighboring Cat House, which is named for her. Cat's a legend among the squatters due to her association with certain celebrities when she was young and beautiful. Now she prefers a more insular life with her menagerie of cats, and she and Amelia develop an unlikely rapport. With other members of their squatter family, the five make ends meet with mainstream day jobs, but evenings find them Dumpster diving and salvaging materials to feed themselves and repair their buildings. However, the city's plan to evict them forces the squatters into action: They set up an eviction watch and enlist a lawyer to argue their case. As their convictions become embroiled with their crumbling private lives, they are swept into actions that determine their fates. Luna creates an array of complex characters caught up in emotions, relationships and situations far from the ordinary as they examine their commitments to their merged family and explore their own ideals and expectations. Enlightening and marked by inventive subject matter, intense reflection and stark eloquence.

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October 15, 2013
It's 1994, and Rudy Giuliani wants to oust a group of hard-working homesteaders from their makeshift home in an abandoned building on New York's Lower East Side. Led by Dutch immigrant Gerrit, a veteran squatter who fled Amsterdam after a violent eviction, and Steve, a tough-talking, philandering handyman of Puerto Rican heritage, the community readies for a fight to save Thirteen House (so-called for its address on Thirteenth Street). Spanning seven months, from a difficult winter into the fresh hope of spring, Luna portrays the thorny, complicated relationships among addicts and runaways in various stages of recovery with riveting passion and heartrending realism. Luna's narrator moves with omniscient ease into the minds of Steve and Gerrit, as well as young, pregnant Amelia and the feline rehabilitation expert, Cat, an especially sympathetic character. Luna unspools the tales of the Thirteen House residents while ticking off the weeks and days until Amelia's delivery and the impending siege by armored police. Luna's forceful, unflinching debut is a love song for a Manhattan long lost to high-end boutiques and high-rise condos.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)