A
wonderful town?
Anne Chisholm
THE THREE OF U.S: A NEW LIFE IN NEW YORK by Joanna Coles and Peter Godwin HarperCollins, £12.99, pp. 294
This book opens badly. Accustomed though all newspaper readers must now be to the rampant triviality and personality- mongering of many successful columnists, it is still startling to find how two estab- lished journalists have chosen to begin their diary of a year in New York. Joanna Coles, formerly of the Guardian, now of the Times, congratulates herself on know- ing how to pee in a squatting position with- out splashing a pregnancy-testing stick, while Peter Godwin, formerly of the Sun- day Times and the BBC and now freelance, informs us that he fiddles compulsively with the walnut-sized growth on his elbow as if it was a worry bead. The heart sinks at the prospect of a medical saga full of inti- mate details we do not wish to know by two self-obsessed thirty-somethings concocting a book out of something as commonplace as having a baby.
However, Coles and Godwin are sharp- eyed, sharp-eared reporters, both of them can write and the streets and characters of New York provide, as ever, good copy. lowanna and Peeder', when pregnancy strikes, are living in a trendy downtown loft in the meat-packing district, round the cor- ner from a sex club specialising in sado- masochism; at night, their windows afford a good view of transvestite black prostitutes going about their business. They live close enough to media celebrity circles to be able to sprinkle their diary with names like Madonna, Rupert Everett and Tina Brown; when they move to the Upper West Side they discover that Richard Dreyfus lives in the same apartment block, so they invent a cute game about bumping into him in the lift and then one day actually do.
The couple has a talent for apparent self- deprecation. Their keen interest in the state of their own bodies is of course shared by most of the people they know in New York; every bizarre encounter with the medical profession is described verba- tim, as are sessions with dentists, yoga teachers and a 'labour coach' called Sigrid with dyed gold hair and slippers who tells Coles to be more `visceral' and to 'get into her vagina'.
While Coles frets about her pregnancy and her column, Godwin frets about impending fatherhood and the novel he is struggling to write. They are both fascinat- ed and appalled by the rich contrasts of New York life, where a dinner party con- sists of a vast platter of takeaway sushi, a 'clutter consultant' can make a good living helping people tidy up, a taxi driver relieves himself into a juice carton while at the wheel and Joanna is confronted on the subway by a man cutting his toenails. Pub- lic affairs feature very little, although they are on holiday in the Hamptons (but only in a very small and noisy flat) when Bill Clinton arrives to raise funds, and they even get a glimpse of his huge, sweating face.
Somewhat against the odds, by the time their baby is born the couple have won the reader's affection, and even a measure of admiration for their rueful, self-parodying humour and willingness to expose them- selves and each other. The birth, which was tricky, is recounted in excruciating detail; but like all universal human dramas hon- estly described, it makes a good and even moving read. Now they've had the baby and published the story, maybe sepa- rately or together they will write a proper book.
Previous page
