Bailey's Cafe

August 30, 1993
Naylor's lyrical novel, a BOMC and QPB selection in cloth, explores the lives of denizens of the eponymous eatery, capturing life in New York in the era following WW II.

August 31, 1992
A self-professed curmudgeon, the Bailey, whose eatery gives Naylor's ( The Women of Brewster Place ) powerful, evocative new novel its title, serves up lousy coffee and greasy food at that crossroads of the world, Brooklyn in 1948. Along with his taciturn wife, Nadine, Bailey (not really his name; he just didn't change the sign when he bought the place) acts as tour guide, taking the reader through the lives of the cafe's habitues--prostitutes, pimps, madams and other human flotsam. For some, like sweet Esther and Jesse Bell, Bailey's is a last stop before oblivion. For others it offers redemption and rebirth. Their lives are revealed in lyrical vignettes combining first- and third-person narration. The slightly supernatural character of the cafe recalls elements in the author's Mama Day , and the story of Miss Maple, a cross-dressing male mathematics Ph.D. who finds fortune and liberation as housekeeper at the brownstone bordello down the block, is reminiscent of Ralph Ellison's finest work. Underscoring both the specificity of her characters' lives and the general ambience of black existence, Naylor movingly captures life in New York and America (``You can find Bailey's cafe in any town'') in the era that followed WW II. BOMC and QPB selections; major ad/ promo; author tour.