Although it’s early, we’ve already committed to Aidan Donnelley Rowley’s The Ramblers as one of our favorite books of the year…You’ll at once fall in love with both the characters and with New York City itself…
Clio, Smith and Tate would feel completely lost in the world, if not for their enduring friendship. Rambling through New York City one fateful week, the trip learns from each other how to let go of past heartaches and open themselves to the uncertainty and promise that the future holds.
Three New Yorkers-a bird watcher, a type-A fixer, and an artist-try to navigate the zigzags of living and loving in the city during one crucial week.
It’s elegantly written and sharply funny.
Think Friends with a little more drama and no laugh track. About three twenty-somethings (a socialite, a newly rick techie...and a birdwatcher!) in NYC. Perfect for the long weekend.
Over a week in New York City, a trio of friends-an heiress, a photographer, and an ornithologist (fun, right?)-support one another like family through hard times. Discuss with your gang over brunch.
This gorgeous second novel by Aidan Donnelley Rowley centers on three different people in Manhattan in the week leading up to Thanksgiving weekend. [...] Sprinkled with beautiful literary references throughout, The Ramblers is a must read for bibliophiles.
…We’re calling it now, this one is going to be a best-seller and is a must-have for novel-lovers.
Sharing that stage, though, is the natural world of Central Park, and the juxtaposition of the human noise against the quiet of the park gives the author’s view of New York an appealing depth.
The Ramblers weaves a bewitching, wise tale of how love’s path may take unexpected twists and turns. [...] a deeply moving and elegant book about how we find ourselves and each other. It pulled me in with its first pages, and wouldn’t let go until the last.
Aidan Donnelley Rowley’s finely honed prose creates a New York story that had me enchanted from the first flirtation. It’s not often that a book embeds you so deeply with the characters that you feel as if you are in the story.
Chock full of the crackling wit, irreverent humor and raw honesty [...] A whirlwind foray into the New York City that Aidan Donnelley Rowley knows and loves — and writes— so well.
Witty and engaging, The Ramblers takes us deep into the cloistered world of three New Yorkers, where privilege does not necessarily lead to happiness. Aidan Donnelley Rowley is an expert at revealing her characters with depth and care.
In this spirited, compulsively-readable, sophisticated tale of entangled urban lives, Aidan Donnelley Rowley has written a love letter to New York, full of sparkling innocence and its ensuing heartache. THE RAMBLERS is a pure delight.
THE RAMBLERS is an engrossing, meticulously observed novel of New York. Aidan Donnelley Rowley explores the lives of characters navigating the challenges of friendship, jealousy, love and the need to confront their past before they can create a future.
11/16/2015
A trio of New Yorkers leading charmed lives must overcome everyday complications in order to move forward in Rowley’s sophomore outing (after Life After Yes). Ornithologist Clio Marsh has her dream job at the Museum of Natural History and the love of the winning, much-older hotel magnate Henry Kildare, who’s ready to commit. But Clio’s having reservations about the relationship: she’s never been up front with Henry about her mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide, and she’s constantly worried that her mother’s demons may eventually catch her as well. Meanwhile, Clio’s best friend and longtime roommate Smith Anderson is trying to keep it together while Smith’s younger sister’s impending marriage provides constant reminders of Smith’s own broken engagement. A chance reconnection with an old college acquaintance of Smith, Tate Pennington, is a temporary respite from Smith’s heartbreak, but Tate, a newly single Internet mogul who’s just sold his company to Twitter, feels unmoored with no job, too much money, and the sudden dissolution of his marriage. Propelled by the kinds of rote sitcom-style misunderstandings that seem like they could be more easily resolved, this tale is light on plot, but Rowley’s Manhattan provides a vivid and charming setting for her nuanced (if not always sympathetic) characters to evolve. (Feb.)
★ 01/01/2016
Clio Marsh is a beautiful, brilliant bird professor, curator, and guide to all things avian on tours of the Ramble, a natural sanctuary in Manhattan's Central Park. She's in love with the much older Henry Kildare, a successful Irishman who reveals a big surprise hard on the heels of Clio's return from overseas, throwing her for an emotional loop. Smith Anderson, Clio's best friend since their Yale days and a professional organizer from a one-percent family, is suffering her own inner freefall, having been dumped by the love of her life while now preparing for the opulent wedding of her younger sister. Tate, another Yale friend, newly filthy rich from the sale of his high-tech company, is in the middle of a divorce that threatens half his assets when he bumps into Smith, and sparks flash, flicker, and flash again. VERDICT Rowley (Life After Yes) once again captures the bright dialog, urban and romantic insecurities, and stylish lifestyle of a group of appealing upper-echelon mid-30s Manhattanites who defy the jaded stereotypes and will have readers rooting for them as they stumble their way to happiness. Irresistible.—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
2015-11-04
A week of soul-searching and lovemaking among Yale alumni in New York. "Tate, meet my mother and father, Bitsy and Thatcher. Mom and Dad, this is Tate Pennington." Still recovering from a recently broken engagement, Smith Anderson has brought her new boyfriend home for Thanksgiving at her parents' estate in the Hamptons, a spread that includes a helipad, twin tennis courts, and a bakery. With characters whose names are straight out of The Official Preppy Handbook; a cast that includes a life coach, a personal organizer, a bird-watching guide, and a guy who made millions on an app called PhotoPoet; two couples in the precarious process of finding love; and a big family wedding involving all of them on deck, Rowley's debut novel seems set to be a comedy of manners among the fancier young New Yorkers. But it's quite serious, actually. The narrative is loaded with literary and ornithological information, includes epigraphs from folks like Darwin, Kierkegaard, and Robert Lowell, and features characters who worship E.B. White and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Clio Marsh's mother committed suicide less than a year earlier after a long struggle with bipolar disease, a truth she's having trouble confronting and sharing with her boyfriend. Clearly, the novel wants to be a lot more than a lighthearted love story. Yet it's most successful in its less serious or pedantic moments. Particularly clever are the artifacts from the characters' lives: a New York magazine review of Clio's bird-watching walks in Central Park, a list of Smith's life-coaching goals, an interview with Tate about his app from the Yale Alumni Review, a few college application essays, and a letter found at the bottom of a box of keepsakes. Enjoyable if at times overly earnest.
