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Summary
Summary
A CrimeReads Best Noir Fiction of 2019 Pick
One of CrimeReads' Best Crime Books of the Year
"Noirish...compelling...innovative."--New York Times Book Review
A debut novel about a young artist, a missing woman, and the tendrils of wealth and power that link the art scene in Brooklyn to Manhattan's elite, for fans of Jonathan Lethem and Richard Price
Reddick, a young, white artist, lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a historically black Brooklyn neighborhood besieged by gentrification. He makes rent as an art handler, hanging expensive works for Manhattan's one percent, and spends his free time playing basketball at the local Y rather than putting energy into his stagnating career. He is also the last person to see Hannah before she disappears.
When Hannah's fiancé, scion to an old-money Upper East Side family, refuses to call the police, Reddick sets out to learn for himself what happened to her. The search gives him a sense of purpose, pulling him through a dramatic cross section of the city he never knew existed. The truth of Hannah's fate is buried at the heart of a many-layered mystery that, in its unraveling, shakes Reddick's convictions and lays bare the complicated machinations of money and power that connect the magisterial town houses of the Upper East Side to the unassuming brownstones of Bed-Stuy.
Restoration Heights is both a page-turning mystery and an in-depth study of the psychological fallout and deep racial tensions that result from economic inequality and unrestricted urban development. In lyrical, addictive prose, Wil Medearis asks the question: In a city that prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity, who has the final say over the future? Is it long-standing residents, recent transplants or whoever happens to have the most money? Timely, thought-provoking and sweeping in vision, Restoration Heights is an exhilarating new entry in the canon of great Brooklyn novels.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Medearis's smart and evocative debut follows the gentrification of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. At the heart of the story is frustrated white artist Reddick, who makes a living hanging fine art in rich people's homes and regularly shows off dexterous moves on neighborhood basketball courts. One day, Reddick has a chance encounter in his neighborhood with an inebriated Hannah Granger, who makes a pass at him, which he declines. It turns out that Hannah, who goes missing after they meet, is the fiancAce of the son of the A¼berwealthy Seward family, the same family for whom Reddick just installed art pieces from their vaunted collection. That Mrs. Leland, one of the Seward's snooty neighbors, pays Reddick to investigate Hannah's disappearance strains credibility. Nevertheless, Reddick follows leads that tie into Restoration Heights, a failed new housing development in Bed-Stuy, where he finds out the truth behind Hannah's disappearance. He tracks his progress on a whiteboard that-with its carefully laid out names, circles, arrows, crossing lines, erasures, and notations-is as much a piece of art as it is an investigative tool. Medearis's novel adeptly explores white privilege, racism, the demands of creating art, and how members of all socioeconomic classes close ranks when it comes to protecting their own. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Medearis' moody debut is a sensitive portrait of gentrifying Brooklyn dressed up as a whodunit.Reddick, an artist resigned to art-handling, meets a drunk girl in an alley in Bedford-Stuyvesant and then watches her suddenly disappear into a house. It could be nothing, but it isn't: At work the next day, he learns that the fiancee of Buckley Sewardscion of one of the wealthiest art collecting families in New Yorkis missing. Reddick is hanging drawings at the Sewards' estate when he sees the picture: Buckley holding the hand of a thin blonde woman, who is exactly the same thin blonde woman he met in a Brooklyn alley the night before. That she was ever in an alley in still-gentrifying Brooklyn doesn't make sense. That the family won't enlist the help of the police doesn't make sense, either. Nor does it make sense to Reddick that, while the Sewards seem to rebuff his help, a different wealthy family is willing to bankroll his rogue investigation, but he'll take it. "I have to do something," he tells his friends. But what opens as a maybe-murder mystery quickly spirals into something else: a novel as concerned with the politics of a changing neighborhood as with finding the missing girla girl who may or may not actually be missing. As he peels back the layers around Buckley Seward and his associates, Reddick finds himself entrenched in the world of Brooklyn real estate while grappling with his own position as an outsider, as he's forced to examine his motivations. "It's veryit's just so white male," a friend says of his renegade investigation. "Like you're the neighborhood's steward, and if you don't look out for it, no one will." (While noble in both concern and scope, the novel is not especially subtle.) Twisty and ambitious and pleasantly brooding, it's a compelling read, if a somewhat convoluted one.Socially conscious Brooklyn noir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This stunning debut opens boldly with the word You, as did Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (1984), and readers are likely to make other comparisons between the two, though Restoration Heights stands apart because of an added element of mystery. Reddick, a young artist living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, has a strange encounter with an intoxicated young woman outside his apartment building, and when he asks after her the next day, she seems to have disappeared. Her fiancé and his wealthy Upper East Side family refuse to call the police, and Reddick finds new purpose by pouring his creative energy into an investigation that takes him and the reader on a disquieting, sometimes dangerous ride through a city overrun by greedy developers and beset by issues of class and race. Longtime residents of his own neighborhood have seen their traditional haunts replaced by gluten-free bakeries, fair-trade coffeehouses, and shops where cheese sells for $49 a pound. Bed-Stuy is no longer a place that things happen in but a place that things happen to. This is an instant New York fiction classic, exuding dark poetry from a lyrical narrative populated by well-defined characters in carefully, or, shall we say, artistically, arranged settings. Best recommended to a younger, hip audience or to aging McInerney fans who remember Bright Lights, Big City with fondness.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
reddick - an artist-turned-art handler - loathes the privileged white people moving into his beloved Bedford-Stuyvesant; the problem is, he's one of them. At the start of Wil Medearis's noirish debut novel, "Restoration Heights," the author declares that we "know Reddick," because he's "that white guy on the subway," totally unremarkable because of his ubiquity. Reddick is surviving but not thriving in Bed-Stuy. He's guilty about the part he's played in the neighborhood's gentrification, having moved there from the South a decade earlier. However, when Reddick is asked to look into the disappearance of a young woman, he banks on the privilege his appearance affords him to gain access and trust, to cross boundaries and invade the privacy of various suspects. In his day job, Reddick regularly enters the homes of elite New Yorkers to hang their extravagant art. The missing woman, Hannah, is engaged to the heir to the Seward fortune. Reddick happens to be the last person who saw Hannah - in Bed-Stuy in front of his building late one night, "tapping at her phone, coiled on the hood of a dark sedan," obviously drunk. The Sewards assure Reddick that Hannah would never be in a neighborhood like that, but he's certain that he saw her, and that she is in serious trouble. It's not clear why the Sewards won't call the police about Hannah's disappearance, nor why the matriarch of another obscenely wealthy family hires Reddick to find her. Reddick soon connects Hannah to Restoration Heights, the abandoned halfbuilt condominium towers near his apartment, as they would be the perfect place to hide a body. They're also the boldest example of the gentrification that Reddick despises, designed and constructed for "the white kids" who want "all the cachet of the neighborhood and none of the hassles. The guilty thrill of being surrounded by blackness without having to live like them. Not separate but unequal." As the mystery unfolds, Reddick must confront the nuances of gentrification as he considers the perspectives of the longtime residents, the developers and even the young newcomers. Reddick is comfortable in different environments (an asset for an investigator). He chats with billionaires about the art he's hanging; he plays basketball at the BedStuy Y.M.C.A.; he debates identity politics with his artist friends in their studios. Attuned to power dynamics, Reddick lets intuition guide his investigation. But does he even have the right to look for the missing woman? "You are not a cop. You are not even a private investigator. You cannot do this," one friend warns him. The mystery itself is a little convoluted. Reddick makes some dubious assumptions about the suspects. The narrative slows when Medearis explains the plodding dealmaking of real estate development, which is not as compelling as the lively tension between his characters. And strangely, the missing fiancee is also missing from the story, since Reddick doesn't seem particularly interested in learning more about her. Instead, he becomes obsessed with Restoration Heights and the corporations cashing in on the neighborhood that he loves. His career and relationships suffer and his circumstances become even more dire. The innovative sections of this novel all deal with Reddick's art background. Art becomes a method to see and unravel the mystery, and Reddick is not only figuring out what happened, he's making something new. I wished Medearis had embraced this aspect more, or at least the seedier thrills of noir. Solving a puzzle is pleasurable, even a grim one. The abandoned half-built condominiums ????· his apartment are the perfect place to hide a body. EMILY culliton is the author of "The Misfortune of Marion Palm."
