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UNDER THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE
by Irene Marcuse
Forge, July 2004
288 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0765308045


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Anita Servi has given up social work and now does simple tasks for her husband in his woodworking shop in Brooklyn, in the section called DUMBO -- Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. They had moved from Tribeca in January. Anita has had lots of tsouris during the last few weeks. The smoke is still rising from the ruins of the Twin Towers, pictures of the missing still adorn walls and fences throughout the city, her best friend died on September 20, and today, October 1, she finds the body of a young man in her vacuum forming press.

The boy is naked except for a sleeveless white undershirt, and some fringes sticking out below that. The fringes could be from the scarf worn by Orthodox Jews. Using that as a hint, Anita travels to various orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn, searching for the boy's identity.

Marcuse gives us good definitions of the various sects of observant Jews, from orthodox to Hasid to Lubavicher, and with the interaction between some Jehovah's Witnesses and the orthodox. She also deals with the immediate post 9/11 daily life in New York City, the hardest hit of the targets on that day.

The neighborhood she describes in detail, DUMBO, is also changing, as is the Manhattan neighborhood in which her husband earlier had his workshop. One man did buy up many abandoned properties in that Brooklyn area and rent them to artists and people looking for large space at reasonable rents. Now, three years after the events in the book, the landlord is turning out the artists and turning the spaces into apartments for the wealthy. As the French say: "Plus ça change, plus la même condo"

I never read the first three in Marcuse's series because I , like Anita, don't like to deal with kids and families in jeopardy. Too much in real life. However, when UNDER THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE came into my hands, I decided to try it and see what the granddaughter of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse was about. She is about being an excellent writer with a sharp eye for detail, and well worth a try.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, July 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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