Manhattan, When I Was Young

by Mary Cantwell

An autobiographical account of a female writer in the 1950s. Fresh out of college, Cantwell arrived in Greenwich Village and shared an apartment with a friend. Despite all the flair of metropolitan life, experiences with high-style department stores, exclusive little shops, theaters, parties, restaurant outings, and even a romance and marriage, she became increasingly depressed. Her close ties to a lovingly encouraging father were broken by his early death. She details the passage of years by describing the flats, houses, and apartments she lived in and the jobs lost and gained in her career pursuit, including at a fashion magazine. Despite Cantwell's lifelong involvement with psychoanalysis, her account is enlivened with the glamour of little black dresses, Steuben glassware, ethnic neighborhoods, and the whole ambiance of the city, presenting anew the eternal charm of the Big Apple for the young -- and especially in that 1950s world Cantwell inhabits, that of magazine and book publishing and fashion and the middle-class bohemia of downtown New York at a golden moment in time.

Genres: Memoir, New York, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Biography, Autobiography, Fashion

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/02/nyr...

Reviews

[christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny thing happened when I was reading Mary Cantwell’s “Manhattan, When I Was Young,” a memoir built around the places the writer lived in New York City during the 1950s and 60s. I first decided I wanted to write about all of the places where I have lived in Duluth -- and then quickly realized that No I Do Not Want That At All. Which made me wonder: How did she do it without going all Demi Moore-pink bedroom-window open shivering in the corner-Aquanet party with Rob Lowe? Writing about your life with all it's puckers and pouts is tricky business, something that has escaped me until this memoir.

She starts in Greenwich Village with a college friend in a space that walks out into a garden and sometimes they sleep with the door open. Cantwell has moved to the city to be near her boyfriend, who will later become her husband, a lapsed Jewish man she refers to as B. The recent college graduate begins what will be a long career -- with a bit of a hiatus -- in the fashion magazine industry. Once they get married, Cantwell and B move to an apartment in nowheresville with the adult luxury of walk-in closets. They windows faced an air shaft and when it snowed, it looked like the flakes were blowing upward. Here she learns to drink, diddle and entertain. It’s also where the migraines begin and the cure prescribed to her is a psychiatrist. The couple eventually moves back to Greenwich Village, where Cantwell -- who enjoys the neighborhood and finds luxury in a certain amount of seediness -- feels most at home. They travel to France. She moves from Mademoiselle to Vogue.

At 21 Perry Street they get access to a shared garden and have interesting neighbors and an interesting collection of hipster-literati friends. Cantwell gets pregnant, even though she’s been told by a doctor she’s too thin and anemic to even consider it. Unbeknownst to her, she’s taking a daily dose of birth control pills -- which she chucks when she realizes what’s going on. The rest of the world blurs behind her as she prepares to have the baby. And afterward she slides into a debilitating depression, goes back to work, gets pregnant again. Her story ends at 44 Jane Street, near nothing. It’s a big old place where it comes to light that B is banging his secretary and everything crashes down. It’s also where she is living when she begins a long career writing for the New York Times.

This story is lovely and name-droppy and matter-of-fact and sometimes looks like the underbelly of a scab. Cantwell writes with an awareness that this isn’t portrait with a filter thick as a fabric softener. There is grit and there are some major issues with self-assuredness and a hop skip jump from daddy to daddy-like husband. There is sadness and hurt. And maybe, as she’s writing, she’s still feeling the drag from some of this. She never refers to her ex-husband, a prominent literary agent, by name.

She makes the process of unraveling her life and respooling it into a memoir look easy and kind of fun. It’s only when I considered my own life in an old carriage house in East Duluth, tossing a small dish of hot butter at my then-roommate’s head, that I realized I have no desire to revisit the different addresses of my life. There are details that I like -- here and there. A place in the West End where I could skateboard in the back door and through two rooms to the front window with its view of water. A place in the Central Hillside had rose-decorated stained glass window. We had a super cool two-bedroom apartment in the East Hillside next door to a middle-aged man who tanned in the back yard with a tiger striped bikini swimsuit not on, but balled up around his twig and berries.

Anyway, I loved this book.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was delightful and yet has a darkness to it reminiscent of The Bell Jar. It's a memoir of life in New York in the late 50s and early 60s when if you were a college educated woman you could practically walk into a job at Vogue. It's about working on magazines, and also about a (pretty dysfunctional) marriage and having children and being a working mother. It's also about books and authors - about being excited when you notice that your grocery delivery is sat next to djuna barnes', about going to Europe and visiting Alice B.Toklas and listening to her anecdotes about Gertrude Stein:

"When T.S.Eliot said to Gertrude, 'And from whom, Miss Stein, did you learn your habit of splitting infinitives?' Gertrude said 'I learned it from Henry James.'"

and, of course you had to go to Europe:

"Because if you did not go, you would be haunted all your life by not having run the bulls at Pamplona while you still had the legs to o it. You would not have the demitasse cups you could trot out after dinner saying "We bought these in Venice before Muffie was born."

It's a little bit Mary McCarthy and a little bit Mad Men, but better, because it's true and it's honest and it's written with charm and with a sort of nostalgia and romance.

[Rhonda Cutler · Rating 4 out of 5]

For women of my generation, Mary Cantwell was a role model. Career woman (and one with a glamorous women's magazine career at that), mother, sophisticated Manhattanite, world traveler, gourmet cook. She seemed to do it all so effortlessly. The reality, we learn from this memoir (one of three she penned and the one that covers her early adulthood) was plagued by recurrent bouts of clinical depression, guilt regarding her mothering abilities, sexual frigidity, and unresolved grief over her adored father's passing. Cantwell is honest about all this, and honest about how her own shortcomings led to the dissolution of her marriage.

What keeps this book from being a relentlessly depressing read, is that, at the same time, it is a valentine to Manhattan. Not the homogenized Manhattan of today, but the authentically gritty and colorful Manhattan of the 50's and 60's. Throughout this time, Cantwell lived mainly in the village, and identifies the various phases of her life through where she and her family lived - Perry Street, Jane Street, the meatpacking district (which was really just that back then). And what a vivid picture she paints of them all, and of the friends and neighbors who figured prominently in each phase. Her descriptions of her colleagues at Mademoiselle and, later, Vogue, are often side splitting, and yet, you just know, spot on. I loved how she described the process of writing the fawning celebrity profiles that figure so prominently in Vogue, i.e. the imperative of 3 adjectives - such as talented, smart and funny. Also about how decidedly unglamorous many of the women were who turned out these slick fashion magazines.

I enjoyed this book so that I read it in just a few sittings. I would have given it 5 stars, except for the fact there are some, frustratingly, dropped narrative threads. For example, after the birth of her first child, Cantwell is clearly suffering from postpartum psychosis - plagued with suicidal and homicidal thoughts. Yet, we are told nothing about her road to recovery. She's sick and then she's better. Likewise for a few other pivotal phases in her life.

Still, I would recommend this book to all Manhattan lovers, aspiring writers, and appreciators of strong, vivid writing. The book was written in 1995, but so much of what she says about her contemporary Manhattan continues to ring true.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reread. Well, simply a lovely memoir of a time and place. Especially if you love Greenwich Village. It's structured around the 5 different apartments where Cantwell lived in the Village and chronicles her passage through stages of growth from single working girl through magazine editorship through marriage and motherhood. There are brambles, of course, as you might expect in a family where the daughters are called Snow White and Rose Red, but Cantwell's a survivor.

[Lorri Steinbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly the kind of book I love to read: NYC back when you could afford to live there, when you could have a perfectly acceptable party with a cheap bottle of wine and a dish of olives, when women were just starting to come into their own, sometimes painfully so. Cantwell's description of her New York is vivid and brings the era to life.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised at how much I loved this memoir. Since moving to NYC, I've been reading NYC themed books and this one fits the bill perfectly. NYC is like a character in the book. Cantwell vividly portrays what is was like to live in the city in the 1950's and 60s. I loved all the detailed descriptions of stores and restaurants and subway stations. Her decision to divide the book into sections based on where she was living at the time is genius. *chef's kiss* I am a sucker for detailed descriptions of places so I really ate up her thorough explanations of how the apartments were laid out and decorated.

For fun, I googled all the addresses to see what they were like now. Since they were all save one in the Village, the places are obviously insanely expensive now. I found it fascinating, comparing her descriptions of 1950s/60s Greenwich Village with nowadays. Unbelievably different. It's like she is describing a different city. Several of the locations she lived in were houses that had been divided into apartments. Now in 2022 they are back to being single homes again. Once recently sold for 9 million.

The world of magazines that she describes has also vanished. Again, it seems like a million years ago that every woman read fashion magazines. Wow, people sure don't work that way anymore. 3 martini lunch, anyone? Sure, she didn't get paid very much but on the other hand she also didn't do very much. She started at Mademoiselle the year after Sylvia Path had been there, working on the college edition. The sense of class and privilege is a strong undercurrent throughout. Cantwell notes this; she isn't oblivious. For instance, there is the assumption when she starts work that she knows French because that is what a lady of a certain class was raised to know. (And they thought correctly, she did)

In terms of writing about herself, Cantwell makes it seem like she is writing about someone else. In a sense she is. She is no longer that naive 22 year old college graduate, but a 65 year old looking back on her life. (This memoir was published in 1995). Who she was is gone. She gives snippets of her emotions and thoughts at the time but it is not detailed in the way current memoirs are written. There is still a veil between her and the reader.

Cantwell is an accomplished writer, even though she downplays her talents throughout the memoir. I'm so pleased at myself for reading this! Such a slice of life! If you have any interested in that era - very Mad Men, Mrs. Maisel vibe - then you should 100% check this memoir out. You won't regret it. I highly suggest reading it as an ebook because you are going to want to be looking up all the things! So many references! I was forever highlighting people and restaurants and stores....

Quotes:

(upon meeting her future husband in college) When I wriggled into his old Plymouth, he studied my backside and said "Guess we'll have to get you a girdle." Ten minutes into our acquaintance and he had taken over. I couldn't have been more grateful. (She's not being sarcastic. She was looking for a father figure)

The fiction editor, Rita Smith, was the younger sister of Carson McCullers. A plump woman with sad brown eyes and an alcoholic past, she was forever rushing off to Nyack where "Sistuh" moaned and reigned.

They were my college friends - triumphs, all of them, of orthodontia and orange juice and poached eggs on toast. They were pretty. I was pretty. Everyone was pretty in the Class of '53. Some years later one of our crowd jumped into the airshaft of the Biltmore Hotel and landed in the Palm Court. I have always thought it was the perfect Conn College death: she just missed ending up under the Biltmore's famous clock.

When one of our English professors, lecturing us on Henry James, said "When you're in the Uffizi, you must..." he was assuming correctly. Of course we would be in the Uffizi someday. Next summer, in fact.

If you did not go to Europe you would be haunted all your life by not having run the bulls at Pamplona. You would not have the demitasse cups you could trot out after dinner, saying, "We bought these in Venice before Muffie was born." You would not be able to say to your old roommate, "Remember Pierre? The boy we met at Versailles? remember that terrible friend of his? Philippe?"

"Your eyes are too big for your belly" my grandmother would say, and she meant more than food - and now I was trying to swallow NYC. Of course I would never be able to: that was the blessing of it. There would always be another street to turn down, another roofline, another Chinese funeral.

The beauty editor, who has a nose you could slit envelopes with and a tart tongue, is fluttering a fan. She is bored.

I looked like the kind of woman who could dance Appalachian Spring, and that struck me as just about perfect: a little to the right of Village boho and way to the left of Peck & Peck and the Bermuda Shop.

I am faithful to my parents creed that small talk could raise you above anything.

The Village is amorphous; I can shape it into any place. The rest of Manhattan is rectilinear, its grid an order, a single definition, that I dislike. But the Village is a collection of cow paths and landfill and subterranean rivers, visible, if you know about them, because they are traced by streets paved to mask them.

And if I am sad whenever I am in the neighborhood, it is because it is a cruelty to have known perfect happiness. Up there, up near the dinosaur eggs and trumpeting elephants, I am once again that young woman with the big belly and my Kate is once again sleeping peacefully in the amniotic sac, and my heart breaks for both of us.

Dying, even if accomplished with a fanfare of bugles and the raising of a golden curtain, cannot be so profound a shock as the birth of a child.

(when she is suffering from postpartum depression) I resolved that whenever I felt the urge to kill someone, I would redirect it and kill myself instead. The relief was tremendous.

"Lock Mary Lee into an igloo with Mastroianni for two years" B(her husband) boasted once, "and nothing would happen." At least, I thought he was boasting.

"there's just one thing," I said to the baroness, "I have to go to Paris first." Now that was the kind of an excuse a former baroness and former editor of Harper's Bazaar found acceptable for almost anything. "My dear," she said in her whiskey baritone, "of course you do."

Because I recognize emotions only in retrospect, I didn't know that I was happy.

Always eager to accept others' definitions of myself - they saved me the boredom, and the pain, of having to make my own....

Casting yourself in character parts is a pleasant way to trundle through life. It promises continuity.

It is that self-consciousness, not courage or religious convictions, that keeps people like me alive. How can we watch our own high dramas if we are not around to see them? We are always two people, the star and the spectator, and it is the latter that keeps the former working.

[Mrs.Chardonnay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. I was completely engrossed. A captivating, rare glimpse into mid-20th century Manhattan, a golden age when it was a magical, fairytale of a place to be.

[Jennifer S. Brown]

Mary Cantwell's memoir covers the years of her married life in New York in the 1950s and 1960s. She worked at Mademoiselle and Vogue, and her husband (who is only referred to as B.) was a well known literary agent. The book is raw--her oddly anti-Semitic attitudes (especially toward her own lapsed Jewish husband), her struggles with depression, her ambivalence about motherhood, the incredibly sexist environment. But it captures the time period as few other memoirs do. Her writing is gorgeous and New York City, particularly the Village, is a character in itself. So hard to imagine the New York of this time period, with the old livery stables being transformed into apartments and the garbage piers in the Village. The book has a Mad Man-esque feel to it, with lots of name dropping and retro attitudes. This isn't a big book--no huge tragedies--but it's one of the most beautifully written memoirs I've read. It's a master class in how memoir should be done.

[Molly Cleary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve missed tracking my books and writing reviews. This one was referenced in Carole Radziwell’s memoir - as her favorite book about New York. After returning from a trip back to Brooklyn a few weeks ago, I picked it up to maintain a closeness. Perhaps Mary Lee’s was a spectacular life, but it felt as familiar as all the other women of her set that I’ve read about. I try to imagine how some of the sentiments came across when it was published (mid-90s) but I’m still a little bored. The writing is descriptive and honest and nostalgic. Not the best, but it let me keep a part of myself in NY a little longer, which is always a good thing.

[Samantha Engst-Mansilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply mundane, human, and beautiful

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tried reading this book shortly after I moved to New York and it didn't stick. I quit after maybe 30 pages. It's one of those very niche books that seems like it was published almost exclusively for people who live here. You probably don't need to know about the nuanced differences between East 23rd Street and West 11th to enjoy this book, but it adds a depth that I just couldn't access when I first moved here. At the time, I couldn't connect with it, despite being in a similar circumstance as the author: I was young, I had moved here from out of state with my boyfriend, and my father had died unexpectedly. But now that I've settled and lived in New York for 9 years, and in the Village for four, I get it.

Mary Cantwell describes that version of the Village that died sometime in the late 90s or early 00s, but without that gross romanticism that overlooks the fact that during the "good old days" the city was teetering on bankruptcy and people regularly put signs in their car windows that said "everything stolen already". Similarly, she describes the appeal of New York so accurately and realistically, bypassing all of the vague platitudes that you hear over and over about "the energy" or whatever. I loved how she described working and how important it was to her, especially during the late 50s and into the 60s, and how the loss of her father influenced virtually every decision she made.

This is a memoir of a person in a specific situation, in a specific time, in a specific place. If I were someone else, I don't know if I would enjoy it so much, but I devoured this book and it reached me in a way that few books have in the last few years.

[Rachel Smalter Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think some people like this book because of its romantic, dreamy portrayal of New York professional life in the 1960s, and on that point it certainly delivers. But in the beginning, I found Mary Cantwell to be both delusional and horribly self-involved, and I decided not to like Manhattan, when I Was Young. But I kept reading, and eventually began to see this memoir as something else.

Cantwell's greatest strength here is her honesty; her willingness to put herself forth as a struggling human rather than a chipper American housewife. The greatest trauma of her life seems to have been the rift between her romantic ideals about wife-and-motherhood, versus the reality of struggling to balance her magazine career with a fulfilling domestic life. She writes openly about her marital problems, as well as plummeting into a deep depression after giving birth to her first daughter -- a rare quality, I think, in works of nonfiction about women from this era. With courage, Cantwell airs all of her personal demons, and I think it's a fascinating look into the private struggles of a rich white American woman, circa 1960.

[Amanda Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, lyrical ode to being young in New York. Cantwell is an amazing writer and I often found myself rereading certain sentences and paragraphs because they were so wonderfully and movingly worded. You get a very honest look into the constraints of being an intelligent, ambitious woman in the 1960s here. The author also covers her mental illnesses, but does so in a rather removed, glossed-over way. That said, she sort of grated on me at times...the woe-is-me-upper-middle-class-woman's tale always annoys me after a while, and sometimes I found her a tad grating (especially so when she laments about all the expensive stuff she couldn't afford for her apartments--it was very, "and here with have a rustic little chair, imagine the horror of someone of my breeding owning that!"). Another thing that got to me was how Cantwell acted like Greenwich Village was the epicenter of chic bohemian coolness, only worth leaving for a jaunt to Paris. But whatever, most New Yorkers (including me some years ago) are this way. I realize I'm being a little harsh--this book almost reads like a poem in prose form, so definitely consider reading it if you love New York or memoirs.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Cantwell continues to enchant me with her stately manner of writing. I am unable to stop thinking of her, her dignified presence in the magazine world of NYC, her rare life in the budding elegance of the West Village,her stylish friends and parties, her great cooking,and her sad internal life always questioning every decision she ever made. The tales of her navigating a comely marriage,childbirth,psychiatry, working outside of the home,are so honestly portrayed as to almost make the reader a voyeur. I am moved to research every person, author, recipe she mentions. Her times in Paris are the stuff of a novel between the fashion, the meals, and the companions there as well. Above all, though, is the writing...pure...style without stylistics.
I am about to start her third memory-book where she will speak of her yars on the NYTimes editorial board. It is the last book she wrote before her death at an age too young.I am so sorry, already, to not have her in my life.

[Irina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m throughly enjoying this memoir of living in New York in the 1950s and 1960s. Mary, a young woman from New England, moved to the big city and made a life here. She speaks French, works for fashion magazines and lives in Greenwich Village with her literary critic husband. They travel to Europe and occasionally go to semi-glamorous cocktail parties 🍸 Not too glamorous though, this is not Truman Capote’s memoir. It’s like a mix of Mary McCarthy and Mad Men, except this crowd has a harder time finding an apartment for normal people, like the real New Yorkers.
It’s a tale of the city long gone which endlessly fascinates me. I’m jealous of the New York where people talk about books at parties instead of Netflix series. I love New York. Although, like Paris, it’s not mine, I never wanted or needed it to be. I just love reading about it by those who desperately wanted New York to become theirs.

[John Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the reviews I read here were by women. Interestingly, as a male, I also thoroughly enjoyed the memoir. I could strongly identify with Mary in her feelings of accepting others' characterization of herself, indicating a certain degree of inadequacy in her chosen career. Like her, as I matured and progressed through the years, I grew my 'wings' and confidence, outgrowing the 'holler' in WV where I grew up to being comfortable in NYC, Princeton, Paris, London, Chicago, etc. Like Mary, I eventually understood that I was 'hard to live with' (so to speak).
I had no idea of who Cantwell was when I picked up the book at a 2nd hand bookshop. I'm very glad I chose to purchase it - a very memorable work.

[Tadeo Verri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rewiev- Reseña

"Manhattan when I was young" carries a pleasant and attractive reading ideal for hanging out, as well as a good command of the description of the time and place, which fills your eyes and gives you the feeling of being a time traveler. Personally, I am not attracted to the Manhattan of that time.

"Érase una vez Manhattan" porta de una lectura agradable y atractiva ideal para pasar el rato, además de un buen manejo en la descripción de la época y el lugar, que inunda la vista y la entrega de la sensación de ser un viajero en el tiempo Desde lo personal no me atrae el Manhattan de aquella época.

[Theo Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of the most heartfelt, touching books I've read in a long time. Mary Cartwell has a magical way with words in which you not only see the places she is writing about, the emotion of her language makes the feeling of places so clear. She writes about her struggles, of her anxiety, and self doubt, and manages to round it out with sparkling wit. The book ends on a hopeful note - one that expresses warmth and gratitude for life.

[Cheryl Crotty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book from page one. I didn't just read it, I was there with her. Her language was beautiful. Anyone who loves Manhatten will love this book. Those that have not been to Manhatten will want to go. A beautiful, real life,captured between these pages.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book but found it tedious and full of neurotic musings of a privileged white woman in New York in the 50's

[Autumn Kovach · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars actually.

I loved this book and it's a story I haven't read in a while; voices from NY's past. Mary lived primarily in the village, raising her two daughters while working at a magazine company, as they do. No mention of Jane Jacobs but I wouldn't be surprised if their paths crossed while in Washington Square Park. I love the descriptions of the city back then and how timeless the sentiments are. I enjoyed looking up her addresses of her homes and still finding what was there. Once near my favorite intersection of Waverly and Gay St. Here are some of my favorite quotes;

"...now it seems there was no more to fear in this vast city than there had been to fear in my small town. I was relieved when I saw Washington Square Arch, just as I had been relieved when I had seen my grandparents' big awkward Victorian beaming like a lighthouse, but sad, too.The only time I ever think about death is on long walks like that one, when I realize that what I am seeing does not depend on me for its existence."

"You could live in New York, I had begun to realize, without ever having to open your mouth except for life's necessities. You could even be invisible, not because you were hidden by the crowd but because the crowd was blind to your being a part of it."

"It had never occurred to me till then that New York had so many strata, that the city that I was trying to know was only the top layer of an enormous archaeological dig, and that no matter how fast and far I traveled, I would never get to know it all."

"Now the saloon seems a hallucination, but I will stake my life on its reality. Somewhere in downtown New York, in 1954, was a room in which was always 1905."

"You could not just live here. You had to be somebody, do something, it didn't matter what [...] The best way to know New York, to learn to love New York, was to let it wear you out."

"I had never been alone before [...]and I began to acquire a trust, still with me, in my feet's wisdom. My body was becoming my house. I ambulated as securely as a turtle."

"At last the new apartment was ready. 'You must be so thrilled,' people said. 'All that moving around.' Rose Red was. I was not. There were still so many streets we had not walked, so many stores we had not entered, so many lives we had not tried."

[Shalom · Rating 3 out of 5]

(really 3.5 stars)

A now 30-year-old memoir, written by a woman a generation older than I, stuffed with not-so-popular cultural references that are meaningless to me. Raised as a good girl who doesn't talk about certain topics, and who still relies on circumlocutions. Yet -- still a deeply human story, by someone else remains delightfully under the trance of New York City, and well worth reading.

The afterward finally scratched the Jane Jacobs itch, taking the memoir firmly beyond the purely personal.

A brief, moving, and reasonable representative excerpt:
"[The priest] did not scold me for my apostasy or for the civil ceremony that was my wedding [to her Jewish husband] or for my not sending [her daughters] to Sunday school He said instead that he regretted what the Catholic Church, his Church, had done to me. When I said that I wanted to die, he did not tell me that I had to live for the children's sake. He said, 'Jesus would be kinder to you that you are to yourself.' When I told him I thought myself an adulterer because I had lusted for Philippe, he said, 'You are confusing the wish for the deed.. Did we teach you to do that? If so, I am sorry.' He was a nice man, but he did not give me four Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and some rules to live by, so I left with my sins intact."

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. It was a bit hard to follow her writing style and scrambled thoughts. However, I found it to be deeply honest and relatable. I struggled with the rating because it was hard to stay interested in the story. I often could only manage reading a few pages before finding something else to do. But when I made a conscious effort to read more that 10 pages, it was very enjoyable. I also didn’t understand any of her references— both with the people she talked about and places in New York. Overall, the good outweighed the bad. I’ve never read a book like Mary Cantwell’s. I got this from the library but I may have to get a copy for myself. To pick up again and again. I have a feeling the second time will be even better.

[MaryJo Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir is about a young woman graduating from college in 1953 and coming to New York to get a job in the publishing industry. It is told thru the places she lived; from her small shared apartment to her last address in Greenwich Village, and all the places in between. We learn of her fiance, her career at Mademoiselle Magazine, the birth of her two children, her post-partum depression, their dinner parties, her husband falling for his secretary, their divorce, as they move from apartment to apartment. She has a memory of the smallest details of each place. The story is interesting as it tells about life for upwardly mobile people in the 1950s-early 60s in New York and the story of a woman who had a career, something we think of as unusual for that time.

[Sandra]

I enjoyed the book and it was a nostalgic tour through the 70s when I had been reading Cantwell's column in Mademoiselle magazine. I bought the magazine for her column which was entitled:Eat and also because the magazine had excellent short stories. I learned so much about her life and how that played out in her prose. So much has changed in the publishing world and in New York so it had me lamenting about the current state of (or lack thereof) of good editors. I followed her to the NY Times but it was at Mademoiselle where she touched my innocence and created thrill and excitement for the future.

[Daniel Sevitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember what led me to this, but it was a perfect fit for the reading window I had today. It's a little self-indulgent, but deliciously name-droppy. There's some fine, therapy-earned insights into her failing relationship with her husband, but I was less interested in the build-up to divorce than I was in the gorgeous descriptions of Greenwich Village in the 50s and 60s and the insider view of the magazine business back then.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this memoir because I love just about anything written about New York. This one caught my eye because it took place primarily in the 1950s and 60s and mostly in lower Manhattan. It had good descriptions of the area and what it was like to live there then, but the story itself dragged a bit for me. However, it did lead me to investigate more about the author's life and that of her (eventually ex-) husband.

[SheMac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh ... Not really a portrait of Manhattan but of the author's many homes there. The story would have been more interesting had she shared the names of writers, editors and agents that she, a magazine editor, and her husband, a literary agent, encountered throughout the 50's and 60's. Instead we are treated to the story of the inevitable breakdown of her marriage, a fact obvious to anyone who pays attention to the pages devoted to the couple's dating relationship.

[Laura Watt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this memoir mostly for the descriptions of NY in the '50s, recognizing places that are still there, etc. Cantwell is a somewhat disturbing writer, as she alludes to all kinds of mental troubles she was having during this time but never really makes sense of it - I was left feeling like something had been overlooked. (10/97)

[Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Low key memoir that paints a vivid picture of 1950's Manhattan. With few words Cantwell conveys the state of her mind and marriage perfectly clearly. I'll bet anything Matt Weiner read this cover to cover, furiously taking notes.