Granados’ chirpy novel, another roman a clef, is the most recent addition to the NY tip I have been of late. It’s set in the mid-teens, and describes the adventures of Isa and Gala, two 21 year old friends who are living the high life on a zero budget, scraping by as they hang out with a kind of second-tier NY jetset. The book recounts one Summer in diary form. It is anecdotal and sub-Fitzgeraldian. In the acknowledgements there is a thanks to “Gay Gatsby for the inspiration, elegance, and cocktails”, and the world depicted is very much a Gatsbyesque demi-monde, which doesn’t appear to have changed that much in the course of a century. It’s a world populated by feckless wealth; selfish people with little generosity. The warmest character in the book is the Salvadorean restaurant owner who appears in the penultimate chapter, encouraging Isa to dance with her husband, who feels like a counterweight to all the book’s vain socialites, many of them the worst kind of posh British.
The book is anecdotal and doesn’t really go anywhere, beyond this scratching of the surface of wealth. All the same, it is an enjoyable read, and reminded me of life in my twenties in London. Cities feed off youth, they need it to reassure them that there is a future beyond the money. Isa and Gala’s splendid ligging brought back memories of desperately trying to scrape pennies together for the night out, and stories of characters who would move from private view to private view in order to eat and drink. Walking home with no money in one’s pockets for the nightbus, constantly walking the high wire of poverty, even as you tiptoe around the city’s circles of disgusting wealth.
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