Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue, Mark Kurlansky
Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue, Mark Kurlansky
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue
A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music

Author: Mark Kurlansky

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 12 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/16/2008


Synopsis

It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels beyond his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighborhood in New York City. Between paralyzing bouts of claustrophobia, Nathan wonders whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry maker whose parents may or may not have been Nazis. His father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighborhood. With its cast of unforgettable characters, Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue is a comedy of cultures, of the old and the new. It's about struggling to hold on to life in a rapidly changing world, about food and sex, and about how our lives are shaped by love and guilt.

About Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award–winning author of 1968: The Year That Rocked the World; Salt: A World History; The Basque History of the World; Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; The White Man in the Tree (a collection of short stories); and several other books. Boogaloo on Second Avenue is his first novel. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sophia

I've recently made a few wonderful trips to New York City, so was excited to find this book about gentrification in 1980’s NYC in the neighborhood book box. To be sure, it is an amusing read, and I learned much about the distinctions between various Latinx ethnicities, and how they stereotype and di......more

Goodreads review by Bob

Not sure I would have approached this were it not for admiration for Kurlansky's non-fiction food/historical writing, but this is a charming novel with intriguing characters. Set in the just pre-gentrification East Village of the 1980s, the narrative gets most of its color from the contrasting ethnic......more

Goodreads review by Dora

Boogaloo on Second Avenue by Mark Kurlansky At first I thought this would just be a fun read and it was, but so much more. Talk about a melting pot, this one melted and morphed, fused and fomented. The eighties weren't good times for NYC yet what a rich family life the Seltzers had. We should all liv......more

Goodreads review by Cj

This book is a little chaotic narration wise, but I think the reason it’s done in this way is because there are so many different walks of life that that kurlansky writes about, it sort of adds to the flavor of the book. Overall, I really enjoyed reading it, but sometimes the narration came off as a......more