'New York problems': literature puts a city on the couch

The great metropolis has always been a magnet for writers, whose scrutiny has laid bare towers of ‘issues’ alongside its grand glamour

“I probably moved to New York because of the New Yorker, Dorothy Parker, EB White,” the author Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney told Interview magazine recently. Sweeney, now a resident of Los Angeles, spent 27 years in New York nursing her ambition to write fiction. This March, her debut novel, The Nest, entered the New York Times bestseller list at No 3, following a publishers’ bidding war that ended in a seven-figure deal with Ecco. Sweeney has not only made good on her lifelong aspirations, she has also given New York another telling of one its favourite myths: the literary success story.

Related: The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney review – a feel-good tale of family fortunes

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