Secret Frequencies: A New York Education by John SkoylesUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2003

This is the third book from the American Lives Series that I’ve read: I might be on something of a literary nonfiction kick lately, memoir especially, the stories people tell about themselves and how those stories get told. This one is about the summer Skoyles was 16, 1965: living in Queens, learning Manhattan. It’s about his Italo-American family living on “Squid Row,” his bookie uncle Fred who lives on the Upper East Side and seems suave and worldly, his lonely aunt Linda, who gets him a job in the mailroom at Paramount Pictures, where she’s a secretary, and his mother, who suddenly loses her voice and, just as suddenly, gets it back. There’s atmosphere in this book, a Times Square of Automats and freak shows and pimps, the lights and the motion of the city.