SIDEWALK DANCING by Letitia Moffitt reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin
SIDEWALK DANCING by Letitia Moffitt Atticus Books, 158 pages Reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin A sidewalk dance is the step or two that strangers on a sidewalk make together in an effort to get out of each other’s way. Sometimes, says Letitia Moffitt, they naturallly move in tandem, like dancers, until they collide. Sometimes they stay that way, perpetually in each other’s path, never moving past each other. This suspended state of existence—one imagines cells tumbling around a petri dish—infects Moffitt’s novel Sidewalk Dancing (Atticus Books), the story of Grace Chao, a Chinese immigrant to San Francisco, and George McGee, a peripatetic and dogmatic city planner, who intercepts Grace at the diner where she waits tables, and pulls her half knowing into a life of mutual abeyance. The couple moves to Hawaii, where George designs an impossible house, fails to convince his colleagues of the importance of the latest planning ideas, … chop! chop! read more!