Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2020
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An electrifying debut novel that unfolds in the course of a single day inside one genteel New York City apartment building, as tensions between the building's super and his grown-up daughter spark a crisis that will, by day's end, change everything.
Ruby has a strange relationship to privilege. She grew up the super's daughter in the basement of an Upper West Side co-op that gets more gentrified with each passing year. Though not economically privileged herself, her close childhood friendship with Caroline, the daughter of affluent tenants, and the mere fact of living in such a wealthy neighborhood, close to her beloved Natural History Museum, brought her certain advantages, even expectations. Naturally Ruby followed her dreams and took out loans to attend a prestigious small liberal arts college and explore her interest in art. But now, out of school for a while, she is no closer to her dream job, or anything resembling it, and she's been forced by circumstances to do the last thing she wanted to do: move back in with her parents, back into the basement. And Caroline is throwing one of her parties tonight, in her father's glorious penthouse apartment, a party Ruby looks forward to and dreads in equal measure.
With a thriller's narrative control, The Party Upstairs distills worlds of wisdom about families, great expectations, and the hidden violence of class into the gripping, darkly witty story of a single fateful day inside the Manhattan co-op Ruby calls home. Told from the alternating points of view of Ruby and her father, the novel builds from the spark of an early morning argument between them to the ultimate conflagration to which it leads by day's end. By the time the ashes have cooled, the façade that masks the building's power structure will have burned away, and no party will be left unscathed.
"[A] vivacious microcosm of life...Conell's talent for storytelling, wicked sense of humor, and compassion for her characters will leave readers eager for her next book." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"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." - Kirkus Reviews
"Conell creates a microcosm of life on the s*** side of the wealth gap in New York City, fills it with absurd, infuriating, and endearing characters, and hilariously skewers privilege that can't (or won't) recognize privilege." - Buzzfeed
"Singularly suited to the specific times we're in...The novel's portrayal of class, the real and lasting effects that wealth, or lack thereof, can have on your mentality and outlook, is unparalleled." - Literary Hub
"Lee Conell is already one of my favorite writers, and The Party Upstairs is a triumphant debut novel. She writes with such precision, utilizing a sharp sense of humor, that the cuts go deep, so expertly placed, and you find yourself irrevocably changed. Conell's voice is wholly original, unafraid to work with issues of class and gender and family. A wonder in every way." - Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang
"The Party Upstairs made my pulse race. It builds its tensions expertly, like a thriller, unearthing suspense from the daily struggle to earn and keep a paycheck, the never-ending threat of job-loss and destitution. Lee Conell perceives everyone she writes about, rich and poor alike, with perfect clarity: on the one side those who gaze out on poverty as a kind of spectacle, on the other those who endure it as a kind of bombardment, and in the middle Martin and Ruby, the superintendent of an Upper West Side apartment building and his debt-ridden daughter, who pretend—but only pretend—that they're able to watch the bombs fall from afar." - Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination
"In The Party Upstairs Lee Conell follows Martin and Ruby, father and daughter, through a single day as they negotiate the exasperating occupants, living and dead, of the co-op where Martin works as the superintendent. Conell writes with wonderful wit and empathy about the importance of money, the longing for a larger life and the confusions between a parent and an adult child. An irresistible novel." - Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Boy in The Field
This information about The Party Upstairs was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lee Conell is the author of the story collection Subcortical, which was awarded The Story Prize's Spotlight Award. Her short fiction has received the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award and appears in the Oxford American, Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of creative writing fellowships from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference.
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