Stuff I Read: Kings County by David Goodwillie

A young woman finds out that a ne’er-do-well friend from her past committed suicide by jumping off the Williamsburg Bridge, and confronts a secret she buried in nights long ago. David Goodwillie pens a love letter to the early days of Brooklyn’s renaissance in his 2020 novel, Kings County.

Kings County by David Goodwillie

Set in 2010, Kings County follows Audrey Benton, an A & R rep for a small, indie record label based in Brooklyn, and her boyfriend Theo, a continually aspiring writer who attempts to option properties for movie scripts. While at a party celebrating her favorite clients’ graduation to a mainstream record label, Audrey receives word that an old friend of hers, Fender, was found in the East River, likely having jumped off the Williamsburg Bridge. The news sends Audrey into a spiral as she believes that Fender wouldn’t kill himself and was probably murdered because of a blackmail scheme that Audrey and Fender did some years back, along with Audrey’s former roommate, Sarah, and boyfriend Chris. Audrey then tracks down Sarah, who traded in the bohemian charm that she shared with Audrey in Williamsburg for a swanky Manhattan apartment and an opulent life with financier Chris. And while Sarah is initially aloof and seemingly unbothered by Fender’s untimely passing—feeling that the poor guy’s lifestyle finally caught up with him—the trouble that haunted Audrey and killed Fender is her trouble too. That trouble causes and furthers rifts in the former BFF’s relationships with their partners: Theo suffers because he doesn’t know what happened, and Chris suffers because he does. And as Audrey and Sarah delve into the deepening mystery of what happened to their friend, it uncovers business from years past that threatens what remains of their current happiness, and their lives.

First the good: Kings County does a solid job of painting an accurate picture of North Brooklyn circa 2010. Occupy Wall Street was a big deal and features prominently in the story. Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the two neighborhoods featured most prominently, have not yet begun to feel the impact of the Barclays’ Center, so there’s still a grungy, underground feel to the area. The dynamic between all the characters is believable and fit the people you might have seen in those neighborhoods during that era. More interesting are the flashbacks to New York just after 9/11, when Audrey arrives from Florida and forges connections with Sarah and Fender. Those flashbacks convey a sense of longing for simpler times that is universally relatable. As a whole, it’s a well-written story.

Now the bad. The author seems to fetishize the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area of the time without dealing with the impact the population he focuses on has on the surrounding environment. Beginning around 2001, when the downturn caused by the collapse of the towers made Manhattan even less affordable for a certain group of people, they moved into a “gritty” and “undiscovered” cluster of working-class, mostly minority neighborhoods. This sparked a trend where landlords, who previously could not muster a fu*k to give, evicted “undesirables” en masse and spruced up previously ramshackle dwellings to accommodate the new arrivals. Williamsburg was the beachhead of Brooklyn’s overall gentrification, and the author missed an opportunity to comment on it, especially given how much OWS factors into the story. Audrey—and later, Theo—are looked at as the fabric of the neighborhood from the moment they get there instead of as invasive outsiders. The fact these characters are all of Brooklyn but not from Brooklyn is where a major disconnect happens for me. These characters either claim or imply an ownership of the borough and its culture when the Brooklyn I knew from 2001-2009 would have swallowed them whole. Another thing that breaks the world for me is how exceedingly white this version of Williamsburg and Greenpoint are, especially in the 2001-2010 timeframe. Very little local flavor makes it through, and non-white characters only appear sparsely in the book. Otherwise, there are no non-white bodega owners, no neighbors, co-workers, nothing. Considering how much the city is used as a character, the absence of any other group than these WASPs in a town whose main draw is the melting pot of culture is particularly egregious. Lastly, this book’s plot and genre seem to shift constantly. Is this a romance? Mystery? A heist? There are so many competing plot threads, and while it’s written well, Kings County has a hard time deciding what it wants to be.

Kings County does offer a wide variety of treasures, but the book’s focus is far too narrow for its title. Maybe I’d be less bothered if it was called Williamsburg or Brooklyn North. While not a bad book by any means, if you’re looking for something that gives a broader look of what life is/was like in Kings County, this ain’t it.

Pros: Well-written story, believable characters for the era.

Cons: This is supposed to be Brooklyn? Where’s the flavor?

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars