Restoration Heights
A Novel
-
-
3.5 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
A CrimeReads Best Noir Fiction of 2019 Pick
One of CrimeReads’ Best Crime Books of the Year
“Noirish…compelling…innovative.”—New York Times Book Review
A debut novel about a young artist, a missing woman, and the tendrils of wealth and power that link the art scene in Brooklyn to Manhattan’s elite, for fans of Jonathan Lethem and Richard Price
Reddick, a young, white artist, lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a historically black Brooklyn neighborhood besieged by gentrification. He makes rent as an art handler, hanging expensive works for Manhattan’s one percent, and spends his free time playing basketball at the local Y rather than putting energy into his stagnating career. He is also the last person to see Hannah before she disappears.
When Hannah’s fiancé, scion to an old-money Upper East Side family, refuses to call the police, Reddick sets out to learn for himself what happened to her. The search gives him a sense of purpose, pulling him through a dramatic cross section of the city he never knew existed. The truth of Hannah’s fate is buried at the heart of a many-layered mystery that, in its unraveling, shakes Reddick’s convictions and lays bare the complicated machinations of money and power that connect the magisterial town houses of the Upper East Side to the unassuming brownstones of Bed-Stuy.
Restoration Heights is both a page-turning mystery and an in-depth study of the psychological fallout and deep racial tensions that result from economic inequality and unrestricted urban development. In lyrical, addictive prose, Wil Medearis asks the question: In a city that prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity, who has the final say over the future? Is it long-standing residents, recent transplants or whoever happens to have the most money? Timely, thought-provoking and sweeping in vision, Restoration Heights is an exhilarating new entry in the canon of great Brooklyn novels.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Medearis's smart and evocative debut follows the gentrification of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. At the heart of the story is frustrated white artist Reddick, who makes a living hanging fine art in rich people's homes and regularly shows off dexterous moves on neighborhood basketball courts. One day, Reddick has a chance encounter in his neighborhood with an inebriated Hannah Granger, who makes a pass at him, which he declines. It turns out that Hannah, who goes missing after they meet, is the fianc e of the son of the berwealthy Seward family, the same family for whom Reddick just installed art pieces from their vaunted collection. That Mrs. Leland, one of the Seward's snooty neighbors, pays Reddick to investigate Hannah's disappearance strains credibility. Nevertheless, Reddick follows leads that tie into Restoration Heights, a failed new housing development in Bed-Stuy, where he finds out the truth behind Hannah's disappearance. He tracks his progress on a whiteboard that with its carefully laid out names, circles, arrows, crossing lines, erasures, and notations is as much a piece of art as it is an investigative tool. Medearis's novel adeptly explores white privilege, racism, the demands of creating art, and how members of all socioeconomic classes close ranks when it comes to protecting their own.
