Wednesday, May 16, 2007

The ghosts of 995 Fifth Avenue

Toni Schlesinger has really outdone herself this time. I feel there's the imaginative space for an unusual slipstreamish fantasy novel somewhere in there (what happened if you moved into a brand new condo and it was inhabited by ghosts and they were very annoyingly like characters from Sex in the City?).

My favorite paragraph:

New York’s other empty rooms are not quite the live-across-from-the-McKim-Mead-White Met experience, with halls leading to rooms leading to halls, though the conversion of 823 Park with 12 full-floor homes may well be even grander. All one can see now are watery drawings on the Web site, which make the rooms look even more elegant: part of someone’s Bachelard dream of violets in childhood, trembling columns and wing chairs on a snowy night—perhaps for a middle-aged couple in French clothes with a preference for Straub and Huillet films.

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