A Fairy Tale of New York (Donleavy, J. P.)

A Fairy Tale of New York is a funny, lusty, and sad novel of comic genius. Returning from study abroad, Cornelius Christian enters customs with his luggage and his dead wife. His first encounter in New York is with a funeral director, with whom he reluctantly takes employment to pay for the burial expenses. In the course of his duties he meets the beautiful Fanny Sourpuss over her millionaire husband's dead body. However, his over-enthusiastic handling of his first corpse lands him in court. Cornelius Christian wanders through the great sad cathedral that is New York, examining the human condition in all its comic pathos and lonely absurdity. Whether lingering in the Automat drinking from half empty coffee cups and stealing baked beans from the plates of customers who go looking for ketchup, or finding love on a street corner only to end up fighting his way out of a hooker's fists, Cornelius Christian, heroic anti-hero, sings of life's goodness in the wake of disaster. The tale of a handsome modern-day prince in the gutters of New York by the author of The Ginger Man —“ a writer of explosive, winning imagination” ( The New York Times Book Review ). After studying abroad in Europe, Cornelius Christian—born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx—has returned to New York City with a cultured accent, refined manners, and the corpse of his wife who died shipboard. Charismatic but penniless, he takes a job with a funeral director to pay for the burial expenses. There, he meets the desirous and wealthy widow Fanny Sourpuss. But she’s only his first conquest—one that impels Cornelius on an adventure of rescue through Manhattan, from street brawls to calamitous affairs; from a hooker’s fury to murder; from the subway sewers of a dirty city to its towering castles. But how long can the acquired charms of the prince last, how long can he care, and who’ll be there to rescue him ? In Cornelius Christian, who sings of life’s goodness in the wake of disaster, J. P. Donleavy created one of his most indelible, infuriating, and irresistible characters—a “parody of the fairy tale hero, lusting after fallen princesses in honky-tonk New York” ( The Harvard Crimson ). “No contemporary writer is better than Donleavy at his best.” — The New Yorker “Fast, funny and addictive.” — The Guardian Cornelius Christian returns to New York after studying abroad. He is accompanied by his dead wife who he has to get through customs and bury. He has no money and wanders the streets experiencing the funny, lusty and sad aspects of the big city