BOOKS: 'Ground Up'

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By John Greenya

GROUND UP
By Michael Idov
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $14, 288 pages
REVIEWED BY JOHN GREENYA

Somewhere it is written (probably in stone) that first-time novelists should write about what they know. Although in his nonfiction writing, Michael Idov doesn't come across as the kind of person who gracefully accepts Advice From Others, in the case of his first novel, "Ground Up," he clearly did so, and the result is a most happy one for his readers.

Four years ago, Mr. Idov, a writer for New York magazine, wrote an article in Slate about the sinking-ship experience of opening a Viennese coffeehouse in Manhattan, which he and his wife had done, to their great disappointment, earlier that same year. If that short piece hasn't become required reading for anyone with a similar idea, it should.

He wrote, "You know that charming little cafe on New York's Lower East Side that just closed after a mere six months in business — where coffee was served on silver trays with a glass of water and a little chocolate cookie? The one that, as you calmly and correctly observed, was doomed from its inception because it was too precious and too offbeat? The one you still kind of fell for, the way one falls for a tubercular maiden? Yeah, that one was mine. The scary part is that you think you can do better."

In "Ground Up," Mr. Idov fictionalizes the experience, changing Michael and Lilly, his name and that of his real life wife, to Mark and Nina, but keeping the Lower East Side location and, probably, a whole lot more. He certainly has nailed the ethos ("ethos" being the kind of word Michael Idov favors). In an interview with the New Yorker, Mr. Idov described the elusive goal of Mark and Lilly:

"The classic Viennese cafe, with its newspapers spread on bamboo holders and solitary drunks nodding off over a glass of wine in the corner, is an amazing crossroads of private and public space. A communal exercise in individuality, if that makes any sense." While that might make sense, as the author shows in chapter after chapter opening such a coffeehouse in NYC certainly does not.

As far as his main characters are concerned, Mr. Idov walks a thin line between satire and affection. Lilly is a disaffected lawyer, and Mark a freelance book reviewer for Kirkus, an intellectual occupation guaranteed to pay well below the minimum wage, even if he were diligent about it, which he is not.

The couple is able to live as well as they do in part thanks to Nina's job but mainly because her mother, Kee, an AmerAsian Dragon Lady lawyer-businesswoman, lent her daughter the money to buy their great apartment (but put her name on the co-op's main lease).

Nina is usually estranged from her mother, so it takes a while for Mark to meet his mother-in-law. "Before I met Kee," he tells the reader, "the version of her that existed in my mind was a cross between a deposed empress and a DMV clerk. When we did meet, I found out I was right."

The couple's financial picture is further brightened by their having refinanced the apartment and put half the money — $600,000 — in a mutual fund that returns 10 percent to 12 percent. So when Nina has a very early midlife crisis and wants to quit lawyering, they can afford, or think they can, to open the kind of coffeehouse they fell in love with in Vienna on their honeymoon.

Choosing a name for the coffeehouse is both very important and very hard. Mark says, "Thinking up and discarding names for the cafe was far more exciting than picking a name for a child. … Saddling a kid with a name like Gaylord or Cecily would only wreck his or her life. Misnaming the cafe would wreck ours."

Finally, they settle on "Kolschitsky's," in honor of Georg Franz Kolschitsky who, among other achievements, invented the coffeehouse in the late 17th century. Into his portrait of Mark and Nina's truly loving relationship, Michael Idov paints a motley crew of secondary characters, using various-sized brushes to apply the satire.

Among them are: Avi Sosna ("I wish I didn't have to tell you that our landlord was a six-foot-ten Israeli with a glass eye. But he was, so I do."); Hercule, from whom they buy the wonderfully authentic pastry they have to schlep across town by subway each and every morning; Rada, almost their only employee for the whole misbegotten six months of Kolschitzky's life; and Kyle Swinerton, whose open Midwestern earnestness makes Mark earnestly dislike him even before he finds out he's the manager of Jumpy Joe's Java, the chain coffee shop opening right across the street.

The arrival of Jumpy Joe's isn't the cause of Kolschitzky's demise, it just helps hasten it. As the reader has seen well before Swinerton enters the picture, the place was not making it. As Mr. Idov also told the New Yorker, "I received over five hundred e-mails after the Slate story ran, and some of them contained really horrifying tales. Broken families, suicide. There's something about that daily drip-drip-drip of failure — and the evil way it reinforces the gambler's delusion that you're overdue for a turnaround — that can make owning a struggling small business a true nightmare."

And that drip, drip, drip of failure is what Mr. Idov portrays so well and so humoriously in the second half of "Ground Up." He even brings Mark and Lilly to the brink of divorce, but if you want to find out what happens you will have to buy the book. However, seeing as it's a paperback and costs "only" $14, that's not such a bad deal — and besides, it's a very funny book.

One word of caution: Michael Idov's SAQ — Smart Aleck Quotient — is very high, and if that kind of writing bothers you, then read a few pages in the bookstore before buying. However, if you do buy, I think you'll be glad you did. And also glad you never wanted to open a coffeehouse, Viennese or not.

• John Greenya is a Washington-area writer and critic.