Better Homes and Husbands Book

980 Park, a fictional, pre-war co-op on the Northwest corner of Park Avenue and 83rd Street, houses the rich and famous-Sidney Sapphire, the blonde anchorwoman of ABC News, Angela Somoza, the gorgeous Nicaraguan jet-setter, Bob Horowitz, the former chairman of the United Jewish Appeals, and the usual collection of banking and industrial CEO's, Wall Street magnates, and white-haired philanthropists. The Brooklyn-born doorman, Vinnie Ferretti, joins the ranks when he becomes a major fashion designer.

The building's board, rich as clotted cream, sips gin in the afternoons and devises ways to keep out anyone deemed "inappropriate." Stifled resentments come to a head when the French baroness in the penthouse dies, and two Jewish families in the building suspect the co-op board of more discrimination with regard to prospective buyers than might be legal.

Better Homes and Husbands is a stylish, richly woven novel about class and caste feuds, played out with ferocity and etiquette in a posh New York apartment building during the tumultuous period of social change between 1970 and 2000.

Publishers Weekly

Leff serves up a slice of the good life in this group portrait novel, following the lives of the residents of an exclusive prewar co-op building in New York City from the 1970s to the present day. The denizens of 980 Park Avenue have little in common except for their tony address on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Genial attorney Dick Sapphire, the building's first Jewish resident, struggles through the suicide of his first wife and the career ambitions of a second. Mrs. Coddington, an archetypal WASP, presides over the building's co-op board and spends her boorish husband's ample wealth. Angela Somoza, granddaughter of a Latin dictator, defies her heritage by smuggling in illegal Guatemalan freedom fighters and denouncing the anti-Semitism of the co-op board. Battles of race, religion and ideology give an edge to this cozy chronicle. Leff provides plenty of glittering details, but she doesn't neglect the lives of the building's service people, like elevator operator Vinnie, who becomes a fashion designer. Her protagonists are types, but Leff is skilled at teasing out their small idiosyncrasies. Sedate and slightly old-fashioned, this is a warmhearted, generously imagined New York story. Agent, Bill Contardi. (June) Forecast: Local sales should be strongest for this novel, an interesting counterpart to Cheryl Mendelson's 2003 novel Morningside Heights, which was set on the Upper West Side and was (predictably) more academic in tone. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.