Cornelius Sky
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"A serious comic novel about human failings and forgiveness. This remarkable study of a doorman will stay with you, and live on." —Allison Janney, Oscar Award–winning actress
Cornelius Sky is a doorman in a posh Fifth Avenue apartment building that houses New York City's elite, including a former First Lady whose husband was assassinated while in office. It is 1974 and New York City is heading toward a financial crisis. At work, Connie prides himself on his ability to buff a marble floor better than anyone, a talent that so far has kept him from being fired for his drinking. He pushes the boundaries of his duties, partying and playing board games with the former First Lady's lonely thirteen-year-old son in the service stairwell—the only place where the boy is not spied upon mercilessly by the tabloid press and his Secret Service detail.
Connie believes he is the only one who can offer true solace and companionship to this fatherless boy, but his constant neglect of his own sons and their mother reaches a boiling point. His wife changes the locks on his own door, and he finds himself wandering the mean streets of the city in his uniform, where unlikely angels offer him a path toward redemption. Cornelius Sky is an elegant picaresque that beautifully captures an opulent city on the edge of ruin and recovery.
"A novel that seems to be everywhere, and is superbly told. The storyteller has the sharp eye and calm voice of an intrigued looker-on." —Larry Heinemann, National Book Award–winning author of Paco's Story
"A dramatically satisfying and emotional resonant novel." —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brandoff's memorable debut follows the unraveling of Connie Sky, a doorman at a posh apartment building on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. The year is 1974, and Connie, who drinks too much, befriends a 13-year-old tenant, John, the son of a widowed former First Lady, with whom he plays games and gets high. At home, his wife, Maureen, has decided she and the kids can no longer live with him and throws him out. He moves into a rooming house, where he comes to know David, an alcoholic and unemployed actor, and Susan, a proofreader with a subversive past. At work, Connie is given a one-day suspension for hitting a paparazzo trying to take a picture of John. But when John is presented as the victim of a Central Park mugging on the news, Connie wrongheadedly tries to set the record straight with a drunken TV interview, thus precipitating his ultimate downfall. Though the story rambles, the author impresses as a master of street-smart dialogue in the tradition of George V. Higgins. Connie's world is made up of lost souls, all lucidly etched, and Brandoff recreates a vanished New York of Alexander's, Blarney Stones, and Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel on the local TV news. In the end, Brandoff makes Connie's path to understanding himself feel well-earned. This is a dramatically satisfying and emotional resonant novel.
