Bookshelf    Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

By Sari Botton (Seal Press, 2013) Buy It Now

Yes, there is life after Zabar’s. Rosendale resident Botton named this feisty, multifaceted anthology after Joan Didion’s classic 1968 essay, soliciting contributions from an articulate flash mob of recovering ex-New Yorkers such as Cheryl Strayed, Ann Hood, and Dabi Shapiro. Hudson Valley transplants include Botton, Valerie Eagle, Maggie Estep, Dana Kinstler, Janet Steen, Eva Tenuto, and the mordant Rebecca Wolff (“I must punish New York for its lameness by my desertion”). By turns wistful and caustic, nostalgic and heartbreaking, it’s the perfect book to read on a northbound train out of Grand Central Station.