The Ballad of West Tenth Street

Starred review from October 27, 2008
Full of lower Manhattan’s eccentricities, this captivating debut peeks in on the family of a late rock icon, Ree Hollander, in its West 10th Street townhouse. His widow, Sadie, met the rocker after ditching college for a less conventional education in swinging London. A doting mother, Sadie is a “dedicated drinker,” whose thirst for vodka has grown since her eldest, Gretchen—the only child old enough to know Ree before he overdosed at 39—checked into a Connecticut mental institution for self-mutilation. The adolescents, Ondine and Hamish, eschew public school for lessons from their bohemian neighbors. Also afloat in this quirky sea are London-based Brian, Ree’s best friend and bandmate who’s lusted after Sadie since Ree’s death 12 years ago, and Cap’n Meat, a genteel bum and Vietnam vet who guards the children from less savory street characters. When a near-fatal motorcycle accident sends Sadie back to London, this unlikely circle tightens around the Hollander kids. Blending a local’s familiarity with a first-timer’s awe, Keenan’s portrait of Manhattan is vividly drawn, an insightful illustration of how a string of city blocks can feel like home.

Starred review from January 15, 2009
Sadie Hollander, the widow of a British rock star, is quietly drinking herself into oblivion. She lives with her two gifted children in a Greenwich Village town house, but life begins to change for the Hollanders when the house next door is purchased by the Colonel, an elderly Southern gentleman. Under the Colonel's aegis, people begin to create an unlikely familyincluding Cap'n Meat, the homeless Vietnam veteran with his pet cat, Titus; the ultra-efficient interior designer Mrs. De Angelo; Joe, a nonunion repairman who plays honky-tonk piano; Ette, the Colonel's South American housekeeper; and Deen and Hamish Hollander, who worry about their mother's drinking and their institutionalized older sister, Gretchen. This is, however, New York, and there are also dangerous, malignant individuals on the scene. Kernan, an artist, masterly limns her assemblage of New Yorkers in this first novel. Her vivid characterizations of these damaged but good-hearted people and the joyous but realistic manner in which she draws New York City come together in an utterly charming fable about the creation of community. Highly recommended for fiction collections.Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2009
In a fairy tale set in modern-day Greenwich Village, where even native New Yorkers can get lost amid the diagonal streets, in one of a matching pair of brownstoneslives the eccentric widow of a rock star and two of her children. The third andeldest is the princess in the tower of this story; she isconfined to a mental institution upstate. A mysterious southern gentleman with a staff with nearly magical powersmoves into the house next door and befriends them. A noble homeless man with a cat, a remarkable housekeeper with a son who joins the two children next doorin adventures, and a series of urban ogres and witches round out the cast. Life is not easy, but the children, especially, are resourceful. Kernan provides the requisite happy ending, though onea bit chipped around the edges. Her novelhas a charming feyness in the beginning that gets somewhat muddied by theexcessive crowding of events at the end. Nevertheless, Kernans oddball vision of Manhattan life should find a following.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)