A review by moirastone
The Astral by Kate Christensen

4.0

There is undeniable pleasure in reading a novel set in a neighborhood that you know and love. But I would have loved The Astral if it hadn't been set chiefly in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. It's yet another Kate Christensen book that manages to show me how absolutist thinking, especially about human relationships, will lead only to loneliness. Ambiguity is painful, change is hard, transgression is jarring, and The Astral puts its characters in those in-between times and lets us watch them flail. It's bracing. It's beautiful.

(Nota bene: I would heartily recommend other books of hers - especially Trouble and The Great Man.)