Riverside Drive

Cassy and Michael Cochran are TV news producers. Michael is a drinker and womanizer, Cassy a silent sufferer. Howard Stewart, successful (though underpaid) book editor, is the unhappy husband of Melissa, a banker who was born rich and is getting richer. Sam and Harriet Wyatt, a black couple, are well-off and happy until Sam discovers that his employer does business with South Africa. Amanda Miller, a wealthy, reclusive divorcee, is a secret voluptuary, and elderly Emma Goldblum lives with her cat at the edge of poverty. These people inhabit the gracious apartment buildings that line Manhattan's Riverside Park. The one thing that connects them is their spunky cleaning lady, Rosanne DiSantos, who lives with her drug addict husband in a seedy West Side hotel. We follow this group from cocktail party to block party, through marital and job strife. Van Wormer's prose, in her first novel, ranges from florid to indifferent, but her realistic characters and situations, combined with occasional blasts of sensationalized sex, will keep her readers turning the pages. Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild featured alternate. (May)