The first of a series in which Tablet reviewers share their lockdown reading.

Up in the Old Hotel
JOSEPH MITCHELL
(VINTAGE CLASSICS, 736 PP, £11.99)
Tablet bookshop price £10.79 • Tel 020 7799 4064

• The first of a series in which Tablet reviewers share their lockdown reading.

A few years ago, I was living in New York and feeling miserable. I was obsessed with not being able to sleep due to the noise of the police sirens outside, and inside, directly above my head, the neighbour’s toddler trundling his walker over the floorboards. I found the city threatening and alien. When people in shops said, “You have a nice day”, I felt on the brink of tears.

An American friend had given me a copy of Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of writings by the great New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell. One day, I grudgingly picked it up, and from that moment my relationship with the city, and with my own predicament, changed completely.

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