THE PARTY UPSTAIRS

One day changes the lives of a working-class Manhattan father and daughter forever.

Martin, a longtime super in an Upper West Side apartment building, has been hearing the voice of a recently deceased tenant. Lily was Martin’s longtime friend and a pseudo-grandmother to Ruby, his 24-year-old daughter; Ghost Lily is now haunting Martin in both menial and meaningful ways. Ruby—who is newly single, unemployed, and deeply in debt—has just moved back in with her parents. Primarily set in the apartment building, the novel takes place over the course of one day. While Martin fields calls from tenants with innocuous and embarrassing requests, Ruby prepares for her interview for her dream job at the American Museum of Natural History—and a penthouse party that evening at her best friend Caroline’s apartment. When the interview (that Caroline has helped secure) is not what Ruby expected, she begins to recontextualize her childhood and lifelong friendship with Caroline. At one point Ruby compares their relationship to a diorama (her preferred art form): “Lovingly crafted, deeply illusory, a lifelike depiction of something already extinct.” Ruby grew up brushing shoulders with the wealthy and thus is less able to distinguish the class markers that separate them—an inability Martin cannot fathom or stomach. When a tenant asks him to dispose of a pigeon nest, Martin angrily remembers what he’s done in the past to keep this job and support Ruby: “He wanted to tell her there were some kinds of debt she didn’t even realize she owed, debts no dream job would pay back.” The strained father-daughter relationship eventually boils over, and Martin's and Ruby’s decisions set into motion a series of events that upend their lives forever. Conell’s debut perfectly captures the co-op’s ecosystem and the ways class informs every interaction, reaction, and relationship inside it. While the plot sometimes dips a little too far into the absurd, Conell’s writing remains cleareyed, darkly funny, and deeply empathetic.

A slow-burning debut that keenly dissects privilege, power, and the devastation of unfulfilled expectations.