Publishers Weekly
06/03/2019
Brandoff’s memorable debut follows the unraveling of Connie Sky, a doorman at a posh apartment building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The year is 1974, and Connie, who drinks too much, befriends a 13-year-old tenant, John, the son of a widowed former First Lady, with whom he plays games and gets high. At home, his wife, Maureen, has decided she and the kids can no longer live with him and throws him out. He moves into a rooming house, where he comes to know David, an alcoholic and unemployed actor, and Susan, a proofreader with a subversive past. At work, Connie is given a one-day suspension for hitting a paparazzo trying to take a picture of John. But when John is presented as the victim of a Central Park mugging on the news, Connie wrongheadedly tries to set the record straight with a drunken TV interview, thus precipitating his ultimate downfall. Though the story rambles, the author impresses as a master of street-smart dialogue in the tradition of George V. Higgins. Connie’s world is made up of lost souls, all lucidly etched, and Brandoff recreates a vanished New York of Alexander’s, Blarney Stones, and Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel on the local TV news. In the end, Brandoff makes Connie’s path to understanding himself feel well-earned. This is a dramatically satisfying and emotional resonant novel. (Aug.)
Buzz Book pick New York Post
"The novel is set against a backdrop of a crumbling Manhattan, where tensions are high and things seem to be at a breaking point, mirroring the chaos in Sky’s own life. Brandoff comes to the material honestly, having worked as a city doorman at several buildings over the course of five years in the 1980s."
Allison Janney
"Brandoff’s Cornelius Sky displays a full gamut of emotion, from seething anger and despair to raucous good humor. Set in a bygone Manhattan, it is a serious comic novel about human failings and forgiveness. This remarkable study of a doorman will stay with you, and live on."
The Cyberlibrarian
"Cornelius Sky is a superb character study, with vivid observations of Connie’s tumultuous life and the tumultuous city where he lives . . . Timothy Brandoff is an astute observer of the human condition."
From the Publisher
"A deftly written and inherently fascinating read from first page to last, Cornelius Sky showcases author Timothy Brandoff's uniquely entertaining narrative storytelling style that offers a unique and original story set against the backdrop of an American metropolis teetering on the brink of ruin and in the hope of an economic, cultural, social, and political recovery."
—Midwest Book Review
"Cornelius Sky is a superb character study, with vivid observations of Connie's tumultuous life and the tumultuous city where he lives...Timothy Brandoff is an astute observer of the human condition."
—The Cyberlibrarian
"Fresh, cliché-less fiction writing paints an absorbing, alternately humorous and tragic portrait of a doorman at a fancy New York apartment building who is in the grip of alcoholism and unresolved trauma from his housing project childhood. The author, now a New York bus driver, draws on his own experiences and those of his family members to create a character we root for even as he lets down everyone around him."
—World Wide Work
"Brandoff's Cornelius Sky displays a full gamut of emotion, from seething anger and despair to raucous good humor. Set in a bygone Manhattan, it is a serious comic novel about human failings and forgiveness. This remarkable study of a doorman will stay with you, and live on."
—Allison Janney, Oscar Award–winning actress
"Timothy Brandoff's Cornelius Sky is a novel that seems to be everywhere, and is superbly told. The storyteller has the sharp eye and calm voice of an intrigued looker-on."
—Larry Heinemann, National Book Award–winning author of Paco's Story
"Who knew how we'd ached for this story of a flesh-and-blood human being? A doorman tortured by generational trauma, tragicomically self-sabotaging, bleakly comic, alternately callous and tender, and electrically, poetically alert to the sights, sounds, smells and existential nuance of Kennedy-era New York. Plus—glory be to God—a huge drunk. Who knew Timothy Brandoff, this bard of Manhattan, would emerge from the Chelsea projects, go on to operate a NYC Transit bus, and end up giving us a novel that is at once a kick in the gut and a strangled cry of exultation? Cornelius Sky sings."
—Heather King, author of Famished: A Food Memoir with Recipes
Kirkus Reviews
2019-05-13
A doorman in 1970s New York City makes a series of bad decisions regarding his livelihood, family, and sobriety.
The title character, also known as Connie, has a contrarian streak and a penchant for heavy drinking—both among the reasons he has difficulty holding down a job and why his wife has kicked him out of their home. Connie drifts in and out of various bars, as well as his place of employment, a posh Fifth Avenue building, having halting and philosophical conversations with people he encounters. Brandoff writes precisely about Connie's mental state and lucidity: "His Rolodex of drunks included full-blown blackouts, wherein days and, in a handful of cases, weeks of the calendar got recessed for good, but more generally he browned out." Eventually, Brandoff reveals that Connie's father committed suicide in a way that also killed Connie's younger brother. It's a detail that helps explain why Connie feels compelled to numb himself and why his connections to his loved ones oscillate between tenderness and something more bitter. Certain details reinforce themes of dysfunctional families: Connie takes in a production of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, and he befriends the 13-year-old son of a deceased former president who bears more than a passing resemblance to John F. Kennedy Jr. and is one of the tenants of the building where he works. But the presence of celebrity in this narrative never clicks with its focus on Connie, making for some awkward tonal shifts. When Brandoff focuses on the details of New York City life, he establishes an atmospheric, lived-in quality. But a tendency to sum up certain descriptions too neatly leaves some passages feeling heavy-handed.
Brandoff's debut novel has a few dissonant moments, but its detailed portrait of a self-destructive character retains a haunting power.
