Edith P. Begner

1959. Just Off Fifth is a novel about a the residents of an upscale apartment building in the East 70s, known as Number Ten. The exact street is not clear to me; the building may have been made up. A famous novelist moves in named Maud Harewood. She's going a little bit crazy over a combination of writer's block and menopause. She wants total quiet, but she lives under a thirteen year old boy named Robin Fay. He's a good kid, and the only kid in the building, but there are a couple of old folks who don't like him. Gradually Maud inflames almost the entirety of the tenants against him. The get up a petition to throw his family out. At last a tragedy occurs which gets everyone thinking about life and death and the value of their community and they realize Maud Harewood was the one who has to go, to a sanitarium.

The men have jobs, in advertising, brokering, chemistry. The wives cook and clean and belong to an endless round of charity committees. They collect art, have penthouse gardens. It is a picture of white wealthy people and their servants. Even all the servants seem to be white. There is the merest hint that one fellow might be gay, and he bonds with the novelist who, it is said, should have moved to Greenwich Village in the first place.… (altro)