Nicholas Rinaldi (1934–2020)

Set within the walls of Echo Terrace, a flash New York apartment building, Between Two Rivers is a smooth-flowing elegantly written novel about the everyday lives of the residents and staff of an upscale Condominium. Rather than offering an intricate plot, Rinaldi expertly interweaves the lives of the characters, tracing how their day-to-day lives cross and collide and become dramatically intertwined as they go about their daily business. At the centre, seated behind his oak desk in the marble lobby, concierge Farro Fescu is the pivot around whom the life of the building revolves. The building is Farro's passion as well as his work, his intimate knowledge of the residents every custom, need and desire such, it seems wires run from his fingers to every apartment. Rinaldi uses Farro to pull the whole together. Through Farro, Rinaldi brings into play all sorts of extraordinary characters, a cross-section of society in fact, who breathe life into the building - and the novel, each with their own very different complex backstory to tell.

Character-driven rather than plot-driven, Rinaldi's narrative cross-cuts intermittently from one apartment to another, spotlighting first one character then another as the narrative focus switches up and down and around the building. The effect is to allow the reader to look through different windows, watching unseen as Rinaldi switches from one apartment to another, and from one scenario to the next - a widow whose apartment houses a collection of wildlife; an ex-Luftwaffe fighter pilot; a plastic surgeon who performs sex-change ops: a frozen-food big cheese who is dying of cancer - revealing in a series of vivid snapshots, the depth and complexity, the heart and mind, of each character in focus.

A series of powerful, dramatic set-pieces including et al, the rape of the Condo's young housekeeper on the subway and the attacks on the World Trade Centre, culminating in the terrible events of 9/11, had this reader racing chapter after chapter through the velvet-smooth prose in what seemed like no time at all; prose infused with surges of anguish and terror that resonates long in the mind. Elsewhere in the book, in contrast, the tone is softer. Recommended! Try also The New Yorker's Wonderful Town and The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories for other perspectives on life in New York apartment buildings.… (mehr)

I was captivated by Between two Rivers when it was first published three years ago, and have since loaned my copy to at least six friends, each of whom has thanked me for the recommendation and wondered along with me - why has this outstanding work not been more widely read? Rinaldi has given life to an unforgettable, multidimensional, disparate cast of characters, each with an absorbing backstory, all of whom move inexorably toward their personal confrontation with the horror of 9/11. We know this is coming, and because we are made to care so very deeply for these people, we hold our breath during the final fifty pages, asking ourselves - with the hindsight of those horrific images - where is he, what does she know, what is he feeling, how will she get on with life? Since the publishing of BTR, several other authors have incorporated themes of 9/11 in their works, most notably Claire Messud in The Emperor's Children and Ian McEwan in Saturday. But none have done so as masterfully as Nick Rinaldi.… (mehr)