The Party Upstairs

Starred review from March 9, 2020
Conell’s smashing debut creates a vivacious microcosm of life inside a tony Manhattan co-op building, where middle-aged Martin, the super, lives with his wife and daughter, Ruby, in the basement. Ruby, 24, moves back in with her parents after her art history degree fails to land her a job, and John, her boyfriend, breaks up with her. Ruby was raised in the building along with her best friend, Caroline, whose wealthy family lives in the penthouse. As children, the girls played games like “Holocaust-orphans-sisters-survivors,” and didn’t notice the differences in their social classes. They remained best friends as they got older despite Ruby’s growing discomfort over Caroline’s economic advantages, a conflict mirrored in the tension shown in flashbacks with Ruby and John, whom she saw as a “rich boy with family money who displayed his paltry do-gooder paycheck as a badge of integrity.” Ruby now aspires to build a diorama of her building and its residents for the Museum of Natural History. Meanwhile, memories of Lily, an eccentric and beloved neighbor, haunt Martin after he finds her dead in her apartment. Lily speaks to Martin vividly and torments the already anxious super. The story culminates at a party in the penthouse, where Ruby’s recent disdain for her friend pushes her to an act that changes the course of all their lives. Conell’s talent for storytelling, wicked sense of humor, and compassion for her characters will leave readers eager for her next book.

May 1, 2020
One day changes the lives of a working-class Manhattan father and daughter forever. Martin, a longtime super in an Upper West Side apartment building, has been hearing the voice of a recently deceased tenant. Lily was Martin's longtime friend and a pseudo-grandmother to Ruby, his 24-year-old daughter; Ghost Lily is now haunting Martin in both menial and meaningful ways. Ruby--who is newly single, unemployed, and deeply in debt--has just moved back in with her parents. Primarily set in the apartment building, the novel takes place over the course of one day. While Martin fields calls from tenants with innocuous and embarrassing requests, Ruby prepares for her interview for her dream job at the American Museum of Natural History--and a penthouse party that evening at her best friend Caroline's apartment. When the interview (that Caroline has helped secure) is not what Ruby expected, she begins to recontextualize her childhood and lifelong friendship with Caroline. At one point Ruby compares their relationship to a diorama (her preferred art form): "Lovingly crafted, deeply illusory, a lifelike depiction of something already extinct." Ruby grew up brushing shoulders with the wealthy and thus is less able to distinguish the class markers that separate them--an inability Martin cannot fathom or stomach. When a tenant asks him to dispose of a pigeon nest, Martin angrily remembers what he's done in the past to keep this job and support Ruby: "He wanted to tell her there were some kinds of debt she didn't even realize she owed, debts no dream job would pay back." The strained father-daughter relationship eventually boils over, and Martin's and Ruby's decisions set into motion a series of events that upend their lives forever. Conell's debut perfectly captures the co-op's ecosystem and the ways class informs every interaction, reaction, and relationship inside it. While the plot sometimes dips a little too far into the absurd, Conell's writing remains cleareyed, darkly funny, and deeply empathetic. A slow-burning debut that keenly dissects privilege, power, and the devastation of unfulfilled expectations.

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