Homecoming: Jill Eisenstadt ends long hiatus as novelist
Brooklyn BookBeat
Before she could finally complete that third novel, Jill Eisenstadt had to break a self-imposed rule: no more books set in her native Queens.
Blame it in part on a Columbia University professor who told the author of “From Rockaway” and “Kiss Out” that she was the “voice of the outer boroughs” of Manhattan.
“He meant this in a kind way, but to me it sounded so ugly at the time,” says Eisenstadt, 53, whose novel “Swell” is her first in 26 years. “I had just published two novels in the outer boroughs — Brooklyn wasn’t even cool yet, let alone Queens. There was no way I was going to become this one-note, provincial author.”