The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf review – charming portrait of an artist in her own world
“I am glad I have the radiance. This time I am wiser,” begins Elaine Kraf’s 1979 novel – now published for the first time in the UK – in irresistibly intriguing style. The narrator is Ellen, an artist living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where she regularly experiences periods of what she calls radiance, or what the rest of us would call psychosis, mental illness, or detachment from reality.
And what “the rest of us” think is part of the problem for Ellen, because the radiances make her happy and she is no threat to anybody. “Fools! No one likes anyone for what they really are.” So she becomes Esmeralda, self-styled princess of 72nd Street. “I am not one of those rulers who is never seen on the streets mingling with the common people.”
The novel is her account of her seventh period of radiance, and writing down her story to help us understand her is how Ellen survives: “Only the typewriter can help me now.” Radiance is certainly le mot juste. Ellen’s account is full of joy, life and colour, not to mention skittish delight as she rides the elevator greeting her “people”.
She also tells us about the men in her life: her lovers, her ex-husband, most of whom have mental health issues of their own – as does her psychiatrist. 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. It is bold, beautiful, challenging and charming.
It was Kraf’s fourth and final novel: she published no further fiction, though she lived another 34 years, dying in 2013 at the age of 77. She said The Princess of 72nd Street was “a farewell to a part of my life composed of dreams and fantasies”. The typewriter, it seems, helped her too.
• The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf is published by Penguin Modern Classics (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
