Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment

From the Publisher

From the author of The Tattoo Artist (“Beautifully written”—Alice Sebold; “Boldly conceived”—The New York Times Book Review), a new novel—taut, moving, accomplished—set in a fraught, post-9/11 New York... about real estate, dog love, and a city on alert.

A gasoline tanker truck is “stuck” in the Midtown Tunnel. New Yorkers are panicked . . . . Is this the next big attack?

Alex, an artist, and Ruth, a former schoolteacher with an FBI file as thick as a dictionary, must get their beloved dachshund, whose back legs have suddenly become paralyzed, to the animal hospital sixty blocks north. But the streets of Manhattan are welded with traffic. Their dog, Dorothy, twelve-years-old and gray-faced, is the emotional center of Alex and Ruth's forty-five-year-long childless marriage. Using a cutting board as a stretcher, they ferry the dog uptown.

This is also the weekend that Alex and Ruth must sell their apartment. While house hunters traipse
through it during their open house, husband and wife wait by the phone to hear from the animal hospital. During the course of forty-eight hours, as the missing truck driver terrorizes the city, the price of their apartment becomes a barometer for collective hope and despair, as the real estate market spikes and troughs with every breaking news story.

In shifting points of view—Alex’s, Ruth’s, and the little dog’s—man, woman, and one small tenacious
beast try to make sense of the cacophony of rumors, opinions, and innuendos coming from news
anchors, cable TV pundits, pollsters, bomb experts, hostages,witnesses, real estate agents, house hunters, bargain seekers, howling dogs, veterinarians, nurses, and cab drivers.

A moving, deftly told novel of ultrahigh-urban anxiety.

From the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times - Caitlin Macy

Yet the core of Heroic Measures is the patient, specific laying forth of the lives of this childless septuagenarian couple, these City College graduates with their little dog, their fluorescent light over the kitchen sink, their regular ethnic dinner with friends, their love for Chekhov and, yes, their Viagra­-aided sex life. These quotidian but palpably truthful details add up to a story that doesn’t seem at all unconvincing. If that seems like faint praise, well, this isn’t a novel that goes for a big plot payoff (despite Pamir’s antics) or courts raves with ambitious prose. With this 48-hour portrait of a marriage in which troubles flare only briefly, Ciment seems to be aiming for something lighter and yet more real.

Publishers Weekly

Ciment's spare and surprisingly gripping novel details one long weekend in the life of Ruth and Alex Cohen, an elderly New York couple hoping to sell their East Village apartment of 45 years. Ruth is a retired teacher and Chekhov devotee, and Alex is an artist, currently adding colorful illuminations to the couples' old FBI files. As they ready for an open house, a gas tanker truck gets stuck in the Midtown tunnel, seizing the city with gridlock and fear of a terrorist attack. (In scenes that border on parody, the local news adopts a "Danger in the Tunnel" graphic and runs viewer polls about whether "terrorists take drugs.") Meanwhile, the Cohens' beloved dachshund, Dorothy, falls ill and has to be taken to an uptown animal hospital. As the real estate market swings in response to the news about the tanker, the Cohens wait for news about their dog and confront the reality of leaving their home. Ciment plays the veterinary, real estate and domestic details like elements of a thriller plot, while the couple's love of their dog provides heartrending texture-literature with commercial crossover. (June)

Amy Ford - Library Journal

Three days of personal and public disasters form the scene of this latest from Ciment (The Tattoo Artist). Aging couple Ruth and Alex find their elderly dachshund Dorothy half-paralyzed on their kitchen floor and rush her to the animal hospital, only to find Manhattan's Midtown Tunnel blocked by a gasoline tanker abandoned by a suspected terrorist. After going through the ordeal of leaving Dorothy at the hospital for care, they must wake early for their open house, where bargain hunters are in full force, playing the tunnel situation to their advantage. Yet Ruth and Alex are playing the game, too, as they look at a replacement apartment. Ruth, Alex, and Dorothy take turns with the narrative, trying to reconcile their histories and personal tragedies with the media circus surrounding the tanker. The story is touching, with more than a little wry humor aimed at the easily agitated media and the vagaries of real estate in New York. By the end of the first chapter, the reader feels at home with Ruth, Alex, and their little dog.

Kirkus Reviews

Three disparate narrative elements-a possible terrorist attack, the real-estate market in New York City, a sick dachshund-somehow cohere into a blackly comic yet tenderly touching novel. Alex and Ruth Cohen have been living in the same co-op apartment for 45 years. Alex is an artist; his current project is turning his wife's FBI file into a manuscript. Ruth, who has put her political past to rest, is a retired teacher with a fondness for Anton Chekhov. Right now, the elderly couple has plenty to worry about. Highest on the list is their beloved dog Dorothy, whose back legs seem to be paralyzed after a seizure. Also, they can no longer handle the five flights of steps to their apartment, so they're looking to sell it and find something more convenient. Perhaps, with the million dollars they've been led to believe the place is worth, they could even move to the Jersey shore or to that island off the coast of North Carolina that Ruth has read about. There are, however, numerous flies in this particular ointment, for something odd is happening in the Midtown Tunnel. A gas truck has jackknifed, and police are quickly evacuating everyone; rumor spreads that it could be a terrorist attack. Alex and Ruth try to follow the news reports that come in fast and furious. Abdul Pamir, the truck driver, carjacks a taxi, then abandons it and takes hostages in a Bed Bath & Beyond. If terrorists are that close, Alex and Ruth's real-estate agent tells them, the apartment could be worth far less than they had hoped. Then there's the state of Dorothy's health . . . Could have been loopy in less deft hands, but Ciment (The Tattoo Artist, 2005, etc.) keeps things lively and edgy throughout.

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