The Princess of 72nd Street

Reviews / Votes

Bold, challenging, beautiful and charming... Kraf balances Ellen's account beautifully, keeping us simultaneously intimate and detached from her as Ellen's crowded surroundings make her seem all the lonelier, and her antic enthusiasm shields a sadness... Insofar as comparison is possible with such an idiosyncratic book, Princess recalls two other New York novels of the 1970s - Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights and Renata Adler's Speedboat -- John Self * Guardian * A raggedy genius is finally queened, bringing a fairy-tale ending to this cracked dark story of the old West Side -- Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author * The Netanyahus * If one were to imagine a perfect specimen of a 'forgotten classic' by a woman writer from the 1960s and '70s, you might come up with The Princess of 72nd Street... it's a slender, accomplished and frequently funny work told from the perspective of a lively and bruised female consciousness....Its first-person narration feels essayistic, full of bold declarations about heterosexual love, gender roles and aesthetics * Washington Post * Had Nora Ephron written while on LSD, she might have read a little like this wryly devastating novella, the rediscovery of which feels overdue * Apollo Magazine * Elaine Kraf's The Princess of 72nd Street lyrically details the seventh 'radiance' experienced by a young figure painter named Ellen who, during fits of seeming psychosis, believes herself to be the sovereign ruler of West 72nd between Broadway and Central Park. Ellen/Princess Esmerelda makes witty observations about creativity, femininity, and public life with a voice that feels startlingly modern * NYLON * For a novel that is in many ways about fantasy, there is a bracing wind of keen discernment that sweeps through from the first pages to the last. Though Ellen is transported into an alternate (and preferable) reality by what she calls her radiances, she maintains an eagle eye on the world she's in and the people around her: their habits, their hypocrisies, their desires, their wounds. It is one of the marvels of this book that Elaine Kraf manages to be so recklessly fantastical and so coolly perceptive at the same time * There's Going to Be Trouble * A frenetic and glittering manifesto, wherein a woman wrestles-or dances-with the most misunderstood parts of herself. A well-deserved reintroduction of what is bound to be a beloved classic for contemporary young women * Life of the Party * An electric portrait of one woman's blazing unraveling. Kraf is one of literature's hidden gems - that rare writer who refuses to let us look away from her bright, transcendent suffering. Her work demands a place on your bookshelf right next to Plath and Ditlevsen -- Sarah Rose Etter, author * Ripe * A provocative 1970s novel.... Almost half a century after it was first published, The Princess of 72nd Street sounds like a contemporary cry for freedom from the expectations of others * The Atlantic * This slender novel immerses us in the brilliance of its world... Comparisons have been made to the work of Jean Rhys; I thought too of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet * Financial Times *