Lee Conell

Ruby grew up between worlds. Her father is the super for a Manhattan apartment building, one that started out full of rent-controlled apartments lived in by middle class tenants, but over time the building has become the residence of the wealthy and privileged. She and her parents have always lived in the basement apartment, but her best friend lives in the penthouse. Growing up with Caroline has meant art lessons and now an expensive degree she may never pay off. Her dream is to work on the show more dioramas in the Natural History Museum and her best friend has gotten her an interview. Caroline is also throwing a party that night in her father's penthouse.

Taking place over a single day, The Party Upstairs follows Ruby and her father as they go through a day that will change everything. The author examines the often uncomfortable interchanges that take place between people when there's a significant financial disparity and in the spaces between employee/boss and friend. There's lots to be uncomfortable and sometimes angry about and Conell is willing to take the characters into awkward situations where no one emerges without fault. show less

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: An electrifying debut novel that unfolds in the course of a single day inside one genteel New York City apartment building, as tensions between the building's super and his grown-up daughter spark a crisis that will, by day's end, have changed everything.

Ruby has a strange relationship to privilege, having grown up the super's daughter in the basement of an Upper West Side co-op that is full-on gentrified, and getting more so with each passing year. show more She wasn't economically privileged herself, but her close childhood friendship with the daughter of wealthy tenants named Caroline, and the mere fact of living in a lovely neighborhood, close to her beloved Natural History Museum and just across the park from the Met, brought with them certain real advantages, even expectations. Naturally Ruby followed her dreams and took out large student loans to attend a prestigious small liberal arts college and explore her interest in art.

But now, out of school for a while, she is no closer to her dream job, or anything resembling it, and she's been forced by circumstances to do the last thing she wanted to do: move back in with her parents, back in the basement apartment of the building. And Caroline is throwing one of her parties tonight, in her father's glorious penthouse apartment, a party Ruby looks forward to and dreads in equal measure.

With exquisite narrative control, The Party Upstairs distills down worlds of wisdom about families, great expectations, and the hidden violence of class into the gripping, darkly witty story of a single fateful day inside a single Manhattan co-op. Told from the alternating perspectives of the super, Martin, and his daughter, Ruby, as they are obliged, one way or another, to interact with the various species of inhabitant of the little ecosystem of their building, the novel builds from the spark of an early morning argument between Martin and Ruby to the ultimate conflagration that results by day's end. By the time the ashes have cooled, the façade that masks the building's power structures of dominance and submission will have burned away, and no party will be left unscathed.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Nicely observed, well-told Sabrina story. Martin, the super, resonated with me in his fed-up hadditness; as did Lily, the elderly principled holdout rent-controlled tenant. Caroline, the rich girl, was bland to the point of being invisible; Ruby, resentful arriviste manqu&eacte;e, I disliked more and more as the pages turned.

I couldn't get to a fourth star because the conflicts were given more weight than I felt they merited based on how they're presented. I'm well aware that, in real life, the point of ignition for a cataclysmic blaze isn't always consequential, but when we're retreading paths at least seventy years old, I want more than the minimum in all aspects of the storytelling. This was the author's first novel, so I'm not mad, I'm mildly disappointed.

Penguin Press only wants $5.99 for a Kindle edition, which is excellent value for money. show less

Having some trauma was called being alive.~ from The Party Upstairs by Lee Conell

In one day, the lives of the residents of a New York City apartment building are forever changed.

Caroline lived in the penthouse and had fancy dolls and a beautiful view and a distant, unreliable, father.

The superintendent's daughter Ruby grew up in the basement apartment down the hall from the garbage and laundry and boiler rooms.

Caroline and Ruby played dolls and make-believe as kids. They both studied art in show more college and graduated during the recession in 2008.

Caroline is supported by her parents as she creates marble sporks.

Ruby must support herself and takes the only job available, working in a coffee shop, her childhood dream of creating dioramas on hold.

When Ruby's boyfriend decides she isn't ambitious enough, they part ways and Ruby has nowhere to go but home, knowing her dad Martin will fume over the waste of an expensive education.

I graduated in 1978 with an English major. Jobs were scarce and I had to work at a department store before 'stepping up' to customer service in insurance and then moving into sales. Our son graduated in 2008 with a creative writing major. It was two years before he got a job, $9/hr work from home in customer service. Ten years later, he is doing well as a data analyst. We do what we have to do. Ruby's predicament resonated with me!

What would Martin's dream job be? He never had one. He had jobs for getting by.~ from The Party Upstairs by Lee Conell

Martin is hard working, stressed, and frankly, bitter. He uses meditation to tamp down the stress. But he is on-call 24-7, asked to do all the dirty jobs. Pull out hair clogs in the bathroom drain, killing the pigeons that nest on the window ledges, kicking the homeless out of the hallway. He hates what he does, but he does it to keep his home. It reminded my of my father-in-law; his dad died of TB when he was a boy and he could not afford college. He worked for the CCC to support his mom. He ended up in a job at Buick in Flint in scheduling. He hated his job. But he supported three boys through college.

Hard times--depression, recession, natural disaster, pandemic--hit most of us in ways that the wealthy don't experience.

People believe they are friendly and supportive with their gifts of Starbucks and MetroCard gift cards, but who needs coffee house gift cards when you are living in a windowless basement apartment with a discarded 1980s couch with cows on it and your bed is a repurposed elevator box?

It reminded me of all the Christmas cookies we received over the years from parishioners. We needed cold, hard cash, not calories. We wanted parsonage upgrades so I could fit a turkey in the wall oven or a replacement for the kitchen floor that permanently stained when our son dropped a strawberry.

There is nothing worse than living in provided housing, dependent on your job performance and keeping people happy, knowing at any time you could be asked to leave. Knowing how it would disrupt your family's life if you fail.

The tenants pretend to be friends with the super and his family. Noblesse oblige is alive and well. The people upstairs realize their power.

And it is making Martin crazy.

Tensions mount between Martin and Ruby, each desperately seeking the other's approval. They both go a little crazy. Bad things happen.

In the end, Ruby and Martin discover that the worst that can happen can lead to a better life.

The Party Upstairs pries open the doors to reveal the class divide, how the poor hobble themselves to unfulfilled lives out of fear. It is the story of breaking free and allowing oneself to make life choices that may not align with predominate values.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review!

The blurb and cover for this book was one that really caught my eye. Maybe it’s being in a college city for the past couple of years, but gentrification has become a well-discussed issue and I thought this book’s topic was right up my alley.

Essentially, The Party Upstairs follows Ruby, who is friends with someone much more privileged than she is — Caroline. After taking out student loans to go to show more college and still feeling far away from her dream job, Ruby has to move back home and experience the violence of class for herself as Caroline throws a luxurious party.

Ultimately, I felt as though the biggest barrier to enjoyment for me was the writing style, which was just a little too wordy and roundabout for me. I’m all for descriptions and tangents in writing when they tell us a little bit about a character’s past or what a setting looks like, but when it gets to this point:

“…the heat pipe in the living room thumped and he remembered how the woman in 4B had recently complained about the thumping coming from 5B, which was caused by the private tango lessons the woman in 5B was taking with the woman in 2C, who had recently divorced the man who had once lived in 7D and who had lost his job in advertising…”

This went on for so long — a page, at least, and it just didn’t feel like it added much to the story, to the characters, and felt more tedious to read than enjoyable, which it might’ve been had it been shorter.

It was the writing style that prevented me from connecting with the characters too — neither Martin, Caroline, nor Ruby were very likable and because of the writing style it was hard for me to really get a clear idea about what each character was like and to follow the character development.

For the plot, there’s certainly something very interesting about a story that takes place within such a short period of time. It reminds me a bit of The Night Before by Wendy Walker quick set-up, quick build-up, and quick unraveling. I think the plot was actually quite interesting for me in the last 30%, but I think it took too long to get there and by then I wasn’t very invested in the characters.

Ultimately, I don’t think this book was for me, though it had a lot of potential in its subject matter. People who are interested in class-based thrillers might want to give this a shot! show less