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    Tuesday Nights in 1980
    Tuesday Nights in 1980
    Tuesday Nights in 1980
    Audiobook9 hours

    Tuesday Nights in 1980

    Written by Molly Prentiss

    Narrated by George Newbern

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    “An intoxicating Manhattan fairy tale…As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

    “A vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love.” —Booklist (starred review)

    A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way—and ultimately collide—amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s.

    Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost.

    As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateApr 5, 2016
    ISBN9781442397453
    Author

    Molly Prentiss

    Molly Prentiss is the author of Old Flame and Tuesday Nights in 1980, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine in France. Her writing has been translated into multiple languages. She lives in Red Hook, New York, with her husband and daughter. You can find her at Molly-Prentiss.com or on Instagram @MollyPrentiss.  

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    Reviews for Tuesday Nights in 1980

    4/5

    72 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I won this book in Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

      The Reagan era, SOHO, an artist. 1980 a time for change and adventures. Pain and tragedy, friendship and love all play their part in the art world.

      Well written characters in interesting relationships. Although sad at times, I enjoyed the ride in Tuesday Nights in 1980
    • 3/5
      Set in the arts community of New York City in 1980, this book weaves together the events in the lives of three characters. James Bennett is an art critic who was treated as an outcast in his youth. Raul Engales is an orphaned immigrant artist whose sister still resides in Argentina. Lucy Olliason has just moved to the big city from her small town to get away from her parents and seek her own path. They are tied together by their love of art and a desire to escape the past.

      I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked the character-driven storyline, but it gets a little predictable and melodramatic when a love triangle develops. I generally enjoy books that feature art, but the connection between art and the artist is missing here. Art, though purportedly central to their lives, seems more like a plot device, as does the child who appears toward the end.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but in the end, the writing was just too pretentious and I kept getting distracted by other, more accessible novels. A good premise - the interweaving lives of four (I can't even remember and I just finished skimming through the final chapters) characters in New York in 1980 - and I liked Lucy and thought all of the characters were interesting enough, but no. A whole month to read 300 pages is a bad sign.
    • 4/5
      James is an art critic with synesthesia - a neurological phenomenon that crosses sensory pathways, allowing him to see sounds, hear colours - an ability that allows him to become one of the top art critics for the New York Times. A personal loss on New Years Eve of 1980, temporarily robs him of this ability and his career is sent spiralling downward. Raul is an artist with a connection to a sister left behind in politically unstable Argentina - an artist who, in James' opinion, is 'the next big thing'. Raul, too, suffers a tragic loss in 1980 - a loss that will forever impact his life as an artist. Lucy is a small town Midwest girl who moves to New York to experience life. Over the course of one year, as the art world faces an unprecedented swell of commercialization, these three people connect and remake each other. James, Raul, and Lucy encounter the depths of fame, humanity, and loss, and are forced to redefine their relationship to art, beauty, and life. I would assume that this is a reasonably accurate picture of the art world of New York in 1980 - my only experience into this world was taking a bus trip to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Picasso exhibit - hardly enough for me to know for certain. However, the book drew me in and I felt, just for those few hours while I read, that I was part of it.
    • 4/5
      Spend enough time with New Yorkers and you'll get an earful about gentrification and Disneyfied Times Square. If you, too, reminisce about a grittier and more authentic NYC, you will enjoy Tuesday Nights in 1980. Time: The dawn of the '80's, the age of disco, women's lib, and just before AIDS, when everything felt wild and excessive. Setting: The arts scene of high end dealers, top auction houses, galleries in abandoned factories, and artist studios in rundown squats. The players: Raul, talented, broke painter on the cusp of notoriety and fame with a mystical connection to a sister left behind in dictatorial Argentina. Young, fresh-faced Lucy, newly arrived from the Midwest and ready to start life and adventure. Peculiar James, who turns his synesthesia into success as a top art critic. From disparate backgrounds, the three each find a way into the edgy art world and connect in ways surprising, erotic, and tragic. Each sustains a loss which may jeopardize their place in this rarified world. I enjoyed learning about synesthesia, a condition in which the senses overlap. James can look at art and experience sounds, smells and flavors. Numbers and people take on explosive colors. Prentiss uses his unique experiences to make the art exciting, fresh and palpable. The narrative gained an immediacy by being always in the present -- one character picks up at exactly the point where another left off. I was rapt until the end and quite satisfied with the ending.The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book -- it took me a while to get into it (there were complicating factors of a migraine, the DNC, and two Shakespeare festival plays) but once I did I couldn't put it down and indeed read the last half in one fell swoop. The ending is a bit neat, but on the other hand I really loved Marge.
    • 4/5
      I could not pinpoint what exactly I loved about this book but I was so sad to finish it because I didn't want it to end. The story is a series of interconnected experience about a handful of people whose paths cross in 1980 in New York. The format works better than so many that attempt this type of thing. The alternating perspectives never overlap, so where one leaves off, another picks up. It gives you such a well rounded view of all of the people in the story. It was moving, it was interesting, and the writing about the art was so much fun! So glad I picked this one up.
    • 4/5
      The nostalgia factor here was a lot of fun—I arrived in downtown NYC in 1981, with the ink on my high school diploma not yet dry, and Prentiss's portrait of the Soho/E. Village arts community on the cusp of becoming the Next Big Thing, still energetic and dirty, was enjoyable. But the characters fell a bit flat for me—for all the narrative of their inner lives, I never engaged with them completely. And there was an underlying sense of research, as opposed to experience—obviously the author would have to be in her 50s now to have been there, and that's not her fault, but the grit and the discomfort that accompanied all that glamour didn't quite make it off the page. Also a few factual errors that probably wouldn't have thrown me except for a passing mention of seeing what Prentiss clearly intended to be AIDS patients in a hospital—not in 1980, no; that would be a year later at the earliest. Anyway, that's a quibble. More important, it's hard to write about art and art-making (and art reviewing), and I didn't feel the power here. But it was a good first novel, and I look forward to seeing whatever she takes on next.
    • 5/5
      Set in New York City in 1980, this novel follows a number of characters whose lives intersect through the art world of the city in the year that John Lennon was killed. Lucy is new to the city from a small Midwestern town. Eager for excitement and adventure, she hopes to meet an artist and live a fabulous life in the city. She eventually meets up with Raul, a painter from Argentina, who paints portraits of real people in a time when painting is considered outdated. His art comes to the attention of a famous art critic, James, whose career benefits from his synesthesia. Over the course of 1980, a number of events occur which cause problems for each of these main characters in their lives and relationships with one another. I thought this was a very well-written and layered novel set in an interesting time period and setting. I enjoyed reading about the culture of the city and the art world in the 80's and I liked the flawed and dynamic characters.
    • 5/5
      I won this book in Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

      The Reagan era, SOHO, an artist. 1980 a time for change and adventures. Pain and tragedy, friendship and love all play their part in the art world.

      Well written characters in interesting relationships. Although sad at times, I enjoyed the ride in Tuesday Nights in 1980
    • 5/5
      New York, on the cusp of 1980, the changing art scene of Soho before it became officially known as Soto. Following the lives of three individuals for the next year: Lucy in her early twenties coming from Idaho to experience life in a big city, James who after college has no clue what to do and whose unique ability enables him to see colors and paintings in a unique way will find himself the reigning critic of the art world and Raul, escaping the post Peron Dirty War in Argentina as well as his sisters new husband whom he despises, will find himself the art worlds new favorite. These three will find their lives entwined in many ways.New York in all its rawness, street artists squats, art galleries, new relationships, grittiness, the many ways to create art, unfaithfulness, a young boy missing and a new young boy arriving. A tragic accident that will change all these characters and others close to them. Loved the way these characters change within one short year, realistic maybe not but possible, a year can seem short but much can happen. This book was structured in such a unique and original way. Combining the disappeared in Argentina and a young boy missing in New York, tragic for those involved regardless of where or how many, one is more than enough. James ability an added dimension to the book, the way he sees colors around things made this so interesting. Not a clichéd happy ending but an ending that shows the characters still have decisions to make, work to do, they still have to change. Julian, the young boy who will make them see what they have lost but also what they have gained.Will everyone fall in love with this novel, these characters, maybe not, but I did. Wonderful book that I wasn't ready to end and one that I will definitely think about.ARC from publisher.
    • 4/5
      This was a fun novel, with several 'whoa' moments - another gem from Powell's Indiespensable subscription. I never would have read this otherwise.