Birds of a Feather

Albert Lawrence almost to the Fifth Avenue manner born is now its concierge that until the Russian horde cloaked in royalty re-vitalizes his disrupted lineage. Born to no advantage save good health Albert Lawrence tells the story of his rise then a precipitous and crashing fall from Fifth Avenue penthouse grace as he returns home from Sing Sing Prison and lands a doorman’s job at his former home where his new life is a shell of its former self. But all will soon be forgiven after the Russians upset the heretofore staid and exclusive atmosphere of this once peaceful Fifth Avenue co-op.. As reviewed by Kirkus Discoveries:. “The denizens of a posh Manhattan apartment building get tripped up by a tangle ofsocial dividing lines in this perceptive comedy of manners.. A black man and an ex-con (he did time in Sing-Sing for kiting checks) Albert Lawrence knows he’s lucky to have a job as head doorman and concierge at an exclusive Fifth Avenue co-op apartment complex. He’s painfully courteous and deferential to the white millionaires who live there especially to John Smith the head of the co-op board and an insufferable prig whose eviction of a nesting pair of peregrine falcons draws public protest. But Albert and John have a complicated relationship. They practically grew up together—their mothers live together on terms of cozy equality in the building’s vast penthouse—and Albert is guiltily carrying on an affair with John’s wife. The building is rife with similar transgressions like the neglected housewife who seduces Latino deliverymen and the teenage girl who’s afraid to tell her father she’s dating a black boy all of which embroil Albert. Things come to a head when Baron Romanovsky a shady Russian with an entourage of thugs and floozies moves in and launches a plot to take over the building. Albert’s delicate position requires him to register and ponder moment by moment the subtle nuances of race class and sexual attraction as he negotiates a series of awkward imbroglios. His employers’ wealth and sense of entitlement makes them by turns haughty chummy or simply oblivious to the burdens they impose on others and Albert must carefully calculate how much leeway their capricious moods allow him. At times the author allows his platitudinous reflections—“We are all human beings subject to the vicissitudes of life that failure and opportunity force us all to face”—to slow the narrative down. But Ephraim draws a rich portrait of this yeasty milieu stocked with amusing intrigues and sharply observed characters.. An entertaining plunge into one of New York’s fizzier melting pots.”.