At the stranger's gate

Adam Gopnik

"A vivid memoir that captures the energy, ambition, and romance of New York in the 80s from the beloved New Yorker writer, to stand alongside his bestselling Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate. When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife Martha Parker left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young and the arty and ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder. At the Stranger's Gate builds a portrait of this moment in New York through the story of their journey--from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Gopnik transports us to their tiny basement room on the Upper East Side--the smallest apartment in Manhattan--and later to SoHo, where he...