Riverside Drive

The New York novel of romance and sex, family and secrets, and women undone. Riverside Drive has been on the list of women's fiction best sellers since 1988!  It is about five households on Riverside Drive in New York who share the same cleaning lady, and what happens after her clients all meet each other for the first time.  This was Van Wormer's first novel, introducing characters who would appear in several subsequent novels, including Cassy and Michael Cochran, whose marriage is in crisis (again); anchorwoman Alexandra Waring, who veers between lesbian sex and a mainstream heterosexual façade; corporate skullduggery is putting everything Sam Wyatt worked so hard to achieve at risk; Howard Stewart's book publishing career is on very rocky ground, as is his marriage; the commitment-less sexual dalliances of heiress Amanda Miller aren't working anymore; and widow Emma Goldblum is in deep financial trouble.  While the Los Angeles Times wrote that Riverside Drive was, "Hot enough to melt the type off the printed page!", the New York Times Book Review said, "8 of the 10 characters are decent, compassionate, patient and even self-sacrificing The book's concerns are meaningful and not sensationalized; rotten bosses; love (heterosexual and lesbian), loneliness, children. And it is comforting to find characters who pitch in immediately to help one another."  The novel was a Main Selection of The Literary Guild.

Dettagli