Jay McInerney
"Greenfeld’s sensitivity to nuances of the zeitgeist and his keen observational skills make his characters (some of whom will seem eerily familiar to longtime residents of downtown Manhattan) instantly recognizable as creatures of their time and place without quite denying them their humanity."
Entertainment Weekly (A-)
“Greenfeld taps into something universal with Triburbia. . . . An accomplished journalist, Greenfeld brings a reporter’s curiosity and an artist’s empathy to his crackling, observant first novel.”
Booklist (starred review)
“Compelling. . . . Greenfeld brilliantly illuminates the pecking order and power plays behind the smug façade of this fashionable urban fortress . . . A surprising, involving, and strikingly perceptive tale of social and personal metamorphoses.”
Susan Orlean
"Pitch-perfect, dry, and smart, this is a vivid portrait of New York, our lives, our loves, and our hearts."
Eleanor Henderson
"Triburbia is a chorus of voices so sharp, vivid, and finely tuned that New York sounds as if it’s speaking directly to us. But more than a portrait of a neighborhood, it’s also an absorbing exposé of the extravagant preoccupations and dark desires of the new millennium."
Amelia Gray
"Voyeurism this seductive and satisfying is usually attended with a trespassing charge. Thanks are owed to Karl Taro Greenfeld for removing the nasty middleman of legal repercussion."
Jess Walter
"I loved Triburbia, loved dropping in on these wonderful characters with their outsized appetites and ambitions . . . Most of all, though, I loved Karl Taro Greenfeld’s deft satirical touch, the searing empathy with which he offers up his privileged, damaged people to the world."
Benjamin Percy
"Triburbia, should share space on the shelf next to Tom Perrotta’s Little Children and Jeffery Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides."
Ben Fountain
"The excellent Triburbia brings to mind such modern masters as Cheever, Updike, and Salter, but Greenfeld delivers his own wonderfully sharp-eyed take on recent American life. . . . This is fiction of the first rank—intense, suspenseful, and relevant in the most urgent way."
Hannah Tinti
"Set on the streets of Manhattan’s Tribeca as it transforms from an artist’s haven to a place for yuppies and their children, Triburbia showcases Karl Taro Greenfeld’s exceptional talent as both a storyteller and satirist."
People Magazine
"Greenfeld reveals his characters’ humanity with sly humor and an unerring eye."
People
“Greenfeld reveals his characters’ humanity with sly humor and an unerring eye.”
Entertainment Weekly
"Greenfeld taps into something universal with Triburbia. . . . An accomplished journalist, Greenfeld brings a reporter’s curiosity and an artist’s empathy to his crackling, observant first novel."
Boston Globe
"Greenfeld is an acute social observer, but Triburbia is more than a chronicle of fading hipness; it’s also a loving examination of marital and family trials and ties."
San Francisco Chronicle
"The pleasures of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s writing are easy to catalog — a crystalline, terrifically readable prose style; a vast repository of trenchant observations; and a caustic sense of humor that recalls Jonathan Franzen yet with a refreshing economy of speech."
The Observer
"Dubliners for the middle-aged downtown set. . . . Mr. Greenfeld’s prose is as lean and declarative as a newspaper article, though there are moments of creepy comic brilliance."
Downtown Magazine
"Triburbia is darkly humorous, occasionally lascivious, unsparing in its condemnations of the main characters and intrepid in its honest descriptions of the human conscience… But it’s not a sad book. It’s a candid one. And a good one. It is reassuring, cathartic even."
Shelf Awareness
"Triburbia is a snapshot of a Manhattan subculture at a certain moment in time. . . . An acclaimed memoirist and journalist turns to fiction to capture the spirit of his neighborhood in the full throes of gentrification."
Booklist
"Compelling. . . . Greenfeld brilliantly illuminates the pecking order and power plays behind the smug façade of this fashionable urban fortress . . . A surprising, involving, and strikingly perceptive tale of social and personal metamorphoses."
Publishers Weekly
In this absorbing first novel, Greenfeld (Boy Alone, a memoir) brings to life the capacious lofts, self-involved chefs, and occasional rent control holdouts of Manhattan’s affluent TriBeCa neighborhood (home to Robert De Niro and Jay-Z, among other celebs). Each chapter (titled by local addresses, such as 145 Greenwich, 65 Hudson, and 47 Lispenard) is told from the perspective of a different local character, from the fabulously affluent to the rent control holdouts. Their lives intersect and overlap because their children attend the same school, they’re sleeping with one another’s spouses, or, in Sadie’s case, because she’s the babysitter or, in Cooper’s case, because she’s queen of the fourth grade. Greenfeld’s chameleon-like ease for shifting characters refracts through the distinct language of thought, the emotional underpinnings of choices made, and the ways in which every life feels both unique and familiar, and his female characters are as authentic, if not more so, than the men. The result is a webby world in which details blend, repeat, and sometimes fade, exactly like running into a neighbor at the corner deli and not quite remembering who his brother is or with whom he may have had an affair. Early on, the book feels precariously provincial—beholden to the local jargon of real estate, gourmet food, and the distinctively insane obstacles of New York City public schools. And empathy for rich people, no matter how flawed, can be a tough sell these days. Ultimately, though, Greenfeld wields his critiques, humor, and observations to create a compelling little universe that will matter even to outsiders who don’t know that Lispenard Street will never be as glamorous as Greenwhich St. Agent: Billy Kingsland, Kuhn Projects. (Aug.)
