The Subway Stops at Bryant Park

by N. West Moss

Overview

Bryant Park becomes a microcosm of humanity and an elegy for a lost New York. From the doorman of 40 years to the woman obsessed with receipts; the man who sweeps the park, the tourists, the homeless; life with its pathos and raucous beauty shines in these characters, who all delight in the park’s tiny world of laughter and music.

“Subtle, such patient stories.… The effect is cumulative, quietly powerful. A remarkable talent.”—Michael Knight, The Typist

“Moss’s lyrical collection of stories is beautifully held together by deft observations of city life combined with great sensitivity to the humanity beating beneath it all.”—Brad Gooch, Flannery

“Incredibly well-conceived and written.”—Patrick Samway, Walker Percy, a Life

“Exquisitely written and quietly powerful…an unforgettable cast of characters, each with a unique and compelling narrative, who are inextricably linked to Bryant Park—safe haven against the secrets, disillusionments, fears, and losses engulfing their lives.”—Patrick Perry, executive editor, The Saturday Evening Post

“Luminous stories…for their deep compassion, their concern for human struggles, their reverence for work and love and fortitude, and their delight in everyday human generosity. This is the kind of debut we need.”—David Ebenbach, Into the Wilderness

N. West Moss’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere. Writing awards include the 2015 Great American Fiction Contest from The Saturday Evening Post and two Faulkner-Wisdom gold medals. West teaches creative writing at William Paterson Universityin New Jersey.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935248910
Publisher:	Leapfrog Press
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

N. West Moss Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Saturday Evening Post and elsewhere. Writing awards include the 2015 Great American Fiction Contest from The Saturday Evening Post, two Faulkner-Wisdom gold medals, and the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction from Lunch Ticket out of Antioch. She earned her BA, MA in education and MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and now teaches creative writing at William Paterson Universityin N.J.

Table of Contents

Omeer’s Mangoes
Sky View Haven
Milagro
Beautiful Mom
Lucky Cat
Dubonnet
Spring Peepers
Dad Died
Patience and Fortitude
Next Time
The Absence of Sound

Editorial Reviews

2017-03-07
A slim debut collection of stories that deftly slip into the lives of everyday New Yorkers.Before it became the green-grassed oasis that it is today—complete with a skating rink and afternoon piano music—Bryant Park was crime-infested, run-down, and frequented by the less palatable denizens of the city. In this collection's first story, "Omeer's Mangoes," an Iranian doorman whose building borders the park witnesses the beginnings of its gentrification firsthand: "They were planning on lowering the park to ground level. Astonishing. Impossible….'If it's not at eye level,' Angelo explained to him, 'the police can't look in. It's like a secret world where all sorts of things can happen. You don't want to know.' " But in the majority of Moss' stories, which are set post-renovation, Bryant Park remains precisely that: a private, nestled microcosm of the city in which the vividly mundane scenes of lives play out among the plane trees. In the gorgeously nuanced "Beautiful Mom," a college-age woman is reunited with her stunning mother near the park's "aggressively plain" Gertrude Stein statue, throwing into sharp relief both the mother's effervescence and the narrator's thrumming longing for her ultimately out-of-reach love. "Dubonnet" features an elderly widow who, encased in paranoia and rigidity, spurns her son's family that lives with her—until the Bach playing at the park releases untapped sorrow from her husband's death, leading her to view her family and surroundings in a new light. Moss' first-person portrayal of the crotchety woman, who wraps her porcelain figurines in cellophane whenever she journeys to the park and nurses an irrational dislike for her daughter-in-law—"I don't even like to say her name (which is Cynthia)"—is both funny and tender, one of the collection's strengths. "Dad Died," which embodies the collection's preoccupation with parental death, is more a melancholy love letter than story; it overshadows "Next Time," a somewhat unfocused account of a woman who must settle her father's estate that never develops its own voice and seems more a synthesis of thematic elements from earlier, more distinct stories. But overall, Moss' ability to probe the rich, complicated depths of those the city views as ordinary—its doormen, library workers, waitresses, and bench-sitters—and capture the profound currents of emotion found in the everyday animates this collection and makes it uniquely illuminating. Definitely worth reading.

Kirkus Reviews