Ground Up

"Charming, manic, and delicious. A caffeinated valentine from a New York already gone, but certainly not forgotten. I drank it right up." —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times–bestselling author

Light streams through the windows as the espresso machine roars; a gorgeous, rich scent fills the air; and witty conversation unspools over the porcelain cups.


That's the café dream. Mark and Nina are about to experience the reality. Determined to re-create the perfect Viennese coffeehouse, they descend on New York's gritty but hip Lower East Side to educate the locals on authentic café culture. Soon Mark and Nina are in a downward spiral that will strip them of money, friends, sex life, status, shelter, and, finally, sanity—and offer salvation through something they have never experienced: disaster.


Inspired by the author's own coffeehouse hell, Ground Up is a sharp and funny portrait of a New York constantly reinventing itself, and a surprisingly tender story of falling out of love and back in it again.

"Every quotable sentence in Michael Idov's brilliantly funny first novel induced in this reader awe and jealousy. Ground Up's narrator is a voice and sensibility I'd follow into any story, any neighborhood. There's talent here of the Nabokovian kind, wresting truth, love, and mordant wit from delightfully misguided dreams. I loved every word." —Elinor Lipman, author of Every Tom, Dick & Harry
"A fiercely funny yet frequently touching novel about the nightmare that the American dream can become . . . strikes all the right chords—both cultural and emotional . . . Everything that can go wrong will, in a manner both hilarious (the coffeehouse) and poignant (the marriage)." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)