Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue, by Mark Kurlansky

Ballantine Books, 319 pp, $34.95, hardcover.

Having previously set his sights on encyclopedic yet utterly entertaining books about salt and cod (Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, respectively), Mark Kurlansky now turns his attention to fiction, and to the New York City neighbourhood where he grew up. Fans of his nonfiction writing, of whom I am unabashedly one, will be relieved to know that his ear for the telling phrase and eye for the significant detail don't suffer from the shift in format.

One of Kurlansky's chief gifts is his uncanny ability to enlist his readers in his enthusiasms. After reading Salt, I started sampling different brands of sea salt; after reading Cod, I cooked bacalao. And after reading Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue I spent several days trying to keep from speaking Spiddish, the fractured blend of Spanish and Yiddish pioneered by Nuyorican singer Chow Mein Vega and known only to the residents of the Lower East Side. For any book to have that kind of linguistic influence on a Presbyterian from Aberdeen is a sure sign that it's got something going on.

Superficially, Kurlansky's first novel is a simple family saga involving the Seltzers, second- and third-generation New Yorkers rich in heart and property but somewhat lacking in cash and common sense. During the summer and fall of 1988, the paterfamilias, Harry, dies; the Holocaust-survivor uncle, Nusan, survives a murder attempt; the nogoodnik son, Mordy, brings home a succession of exotic lovers; and the family hope, Nathan, starts an extramarital affair with the plump and butter-scented daughter of a German baker. Around these events Kurlansky constructs an intricate set of meditations on gentrification, multiculturalism, and, as the book's subtitle promises, pastry, guilt, and music. He's sly, though, for only after we come to the end of his tale do we realize that we've been educated as well as entertained-and splendidly entertained at that.

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