Novels written by non-fiction food writers tend to be formulaic and cutesy but Mark Kurlansky, the authoritative writer of many exceptional food monographs, has delivered something different. His new novel Cheesecake takes a look at how gentrification changes one block of New York City’s Upper West Side — with cheesecake as the main character.
Author Mark Kurlansky has written several fiction and nonfiction books. Photo by Sylvia Plachy.
What inspired him? “I wanted to write a novel about gentrification on the Upper West Side. And completely apart from that, I’ve long been fascinated by the odd fact that the first known printed recipe, 160 BCE, is a recipe for cheesecake, and that this recipe is totally incomprehensible,” Mark says.
The story, which begins in the 1970s, is anchored by a Greek immigrant family that runs a diner. Over the years, they watch the city morph around them. Having lived for 28 years in the neighborhood, Mark has seen the evolution firsthand.
The cover of “Cheesecake” by Mark Kurlansky. Photo courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing.
“Everybody looks at Manhattan in the ’70s, it’s this dark, bad time. But you know what? I kind of liked it,” he says. “I liked the way all the rich people were moving to the suburbs and letting us have our neighborhoods. Now, they’ve moved back in and driven us out. We were better off before. It was an interesting, diverse neighborhood. It had a large Haitian population, and, of course, a very large Jewish population… It’s become one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan. But it wasn’t. It was kind of a middle class neighborhood.”
Dining and Cooking