The girl next door

摘要

BEFORE THE pandemic pushed mil-lennials to seek shelter with their parents, student debt, wage stagnation and unaffordable housing had already driven many in the "boomerang" generation home. For Ruby, one of the main characters in Lee Conell's debut novel, being part of that trend is humiliating. Having graduated from college after the financial crisis of 2008, Ruby tells her mother and father: "It turns out you birthed a living, breathing think-piece. The failure to launch millennial blah-dee-blah." "The Party Upstairs" takes place over the course of a single day, not long after Ruby's return to the basement apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side where she grew up. Her mother Debra is a librarian; Martin, her father, is the building superintendent and the novel's other focus. In alternating chapters, father and daughter reckon with their past and present interactions with the building's wealthy tenants.