[[karl-taro]]Welcome to Triburbia. Well, Tribeca, actually. Karl Taro Greenfeld’s debut novel, set in New York’s trendy lower Manhattan district, is a clever, witty and no doubt thinly veiled chronicle of his own neighborhood and the characters that inhabit it – hip, creative types residing in capacious lofts, preoccupied with the small displeasures of their lives.

After dropping their kids at school each morning, a group of dads congregate at their local cafe for breakfast and banter – among them a sound engineer, a writer, a photographer and a gangster. But amidst the conversation, these men are quietly commiserating over the myriad of dysfunctions creeping into their airy lofts – affairs, bad marriages and wicked kids being the most ubiquitous.

As each chapter traverses a different street of the neighborhood – 113 North Moore, 145 Greenwich, 65 Hudson – we are introduced not only to each of the dads, but also to their wives, children and even their nannies. Over the course of a year, we are privy to their dreams, ambitions, secrets and misgivings. Ultimately, though, these people are plagued with first world problems, exacerbated by the global financial crisis. Ruined by too much choice, they are the same as every other suburbanite… only perhaps a touch uglier.

While Greenfeld’s novel begins as an insightful look at modern fathers, it sinuously changes tone, becoming more about the neighborhood than anything else. Tribeca itself feels somehow more alive and real than the characters whom Greenfeld portrays. Still, there is a wonderful curiosity and observance about the evolution of a neighbourhood and a city village, one that has gone from being home to the edgy and bohemian, to a hub for the wealthy and vaguely creative. Apparently, money can’t buy happiness, not even in New York City.

Nicole Mansour