Product Description

As Diane Kurasik nears the rapids of her fortieth birthday, it seems her world is taking on the bittersweet tones of a life-change comedy from the 1970s, something starring Glenda Jackson or Jill Clayburgh. The director of a Greenwich Village revival house cinema and a single woman who has watched everyone else move on, Diane is reminded daily of her status and her limitations. Clearly there is some lesson she was supped to lave learned by now, but what it is continues to elude her.

Vladimir Hurtado Padrón has troubles of his own. Although he fled Cuba a decade earlier, he still can’t convince his estranged wife in Havana to grant him a divorce. When Diane meets and falls for Vladimir, he is up front about the stalemate in his personal life, letting her make her own decisions. Diane considers the minor role he has to offer and wonders: Would Ingrid Bergman put up with this?

An eviction notice jolts Diane out of her home and her routine–aren’t all New York stories ultimately about real estate? Diane shuttles between the couches of friends and family, dodging advice and criticism in equal measure and touring countless fatally flawed Manhattan apartments.

Meanwhile, Vladimir refuses to succumb to nostalgia as he deals with the exile’s dilemma: What happens when you can’t go home? Then an unexpected visitor from Vladimir’s past arrives on the scene and becomes captivated by Diane just as her ardor for Vladimir is cooling. Diane considers returning his affections, and wonders if she’s lost her mind.

An unabashed valentine to cinema, Don’t Make a Scene is a sparkling, witty novel that asks, Do movies satisfy the yearning, or merely fan the flames? Valerie Block uses tart humor and a deceptively light touch in this fiercely intelligent look at how the movies shape and haunt us, and what happens when the eternal allure of classic movies collides with the daily indignities of contemporary life. Don’t Make a Scene is a refreshing comedy about finding fascination, irritation, and joy in unexpected places.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1315704 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-31
• Released on: 2007-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Block (None of Your Business) adds a nearing-40 protagonist to the chick lit formula in her third novel, and the result is an entertaining winner. Diane Kurasik, a basically happy 39-year-old New Yorker interested in more than just men and shopping, runs a successful repertory theater, the Bedford Street Cinema, and has a fabulous rent-controlled apartment in the Village. But she's single, her job is losing its charm, and she's evicted from her apartment. Diane spends exhausting days searching the city for a new home, living out of suitcases in friends' guest rooms and squalid sublets while overseeing a long-awaited theater renovation. A welcome distraction arrives when she meets Vladimir Hurtado Padrón, a sexy Cuban architect. At first she hopes he might signal the end to an interminable series of boring blind dates, but he turns out to be a handful, not to mention married with a 17-year-old son he hasn't seen in 10 years. New Yorkers will cringe at the painfully accurate apartment-hunting scenes, and the novel is peppered with film trivia and instances in which life (usually Diane's) imitates art. Film buffs and readers bored with fluffy love stories will welcome the novel's sly substance. (July)
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From Booklist
Living in a city where good housing and good men are hard to find, single, approaching 40, and soon to be homeless Manhattan art house cinema manager Diane Kurasik compares her life to the silver screen's great and obscure movies, and finds it wanting. When the not-so avant garde Bedford Street Cinema hires Vladmir Hurtado, a sexy Cuban expat, as the architect for its renovation, however, Diane's love life starts looking up, just as her quest for the perfect apartment sinks to new lows. Having hopscotched from fleabag sublet to friends' sofas, Diane eventually ends up bunking with Vladmir; but when his teenage son unexpectedly hightails it out of Havana, Diane's romantic and residential problems really rocket out of control. Tartly clever in the waggish way that trendy urban novels centered on pop culture are almost required to be, Block's zesty take on love, life, and the pursuit of rent-controlled nirvana is an especially smart and cunning romp. Haggas, Carol

Review
Advance praise for Don’t Make a Scene

“Don’t Make a Scene is a frothy, witty delight that stealthily delivers some very healthy ideas about love, real estate, Cuba, and the movies, and surprises you into frequent sharp fits of laughter. Valerie Block is that comic sensibility for whom fans of Mitford, Spark, and Waugh have been waiting!”
–Alice Elliott Dark

“An entertaining winner.”
–Publishers Weekly

Praise for Was It Something I Said?

“A true comedy of bad manners . . . An infectious celebration of neurotic love. Hands down irresistible.”
–Elle

“Block slyly chronicles the neurosis, annoyances, and chemistry that bind this unlikely, likeable duo.”
–Entertainment Weekly

“Three parts humor to one part horror, Was It Something I Said? considers the perils and possibilities of personal and professional compromise. And it barely misses a beat.”
–The Washington Post

None of Your Business

“Not only is None of Your Business a terrific mystery story, but it’ll also be the funniest book you’ve read all year.”
–Chicago Sun-Times

“Doesn’t Valerie Block know that mystery dialogue isn’t supposed to sparkle? . . . . A magnificently dry social commentary, cunningly smuggled inside a meticulously researched, perfectly paced police procedural.”
–Time

“A delightful and original romp.”
–Chicago Tribune


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Reviewed by Amy Lignor
Diane Kurasik is rapidly approaching her fortieth birthday. She is the director of a Greenwich Village revival house cinema and a single woman who is watching her friends give birth, marry, and divorce - even her niece is entering sixth grade - talk about mortality issues. She wonders if the "life lessons" that she was supposed to have learned by this age have truly eluded her for good. The Bedford Street Cinema, her home away from home, is a fantastic place to spend hours and hours in peace and quiet, reliving the on-screen gems that Hollywood produced once upon a time. The building that sits beside it has been donated to the Theatre so they can restore and add-on another screen to the historic landmark.


In comes...Vladimir Padron, part of a construction/design team that is hired to do the job. Vladimir is strong, intelligent, and beyond interesting. He is a man who fled Cuba a decade earlier, leaving behind an estranged wife in Havana who will not grant him a divorce. In addition, the wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, has moved in with his family who desires and demands Vladimir's return.

There are good characters that pop up in literature once in a while and Diane Kurasik is one of them. Not only is the romance that develops between her and Vladimir compelling, but the token "mysterious stranger" that shows up in this novel is dynamic and passionate. In a nutshell, movies are Diane's life. They show the world what we all want so badly for ourselves; a place where good guys win and every husband looks like Clark Gable, talks like Cary Grant, and waltzes you around the room like Fred Astaire.

There is a "side" avenue in the story about Diane being evicted from her apartment because they are going to turn it into a high-rise. Her search for a good apartment within her price range is hysterical. She bounces from friend to friend and family member to family member. Her parents, who are both loving and supportive, are also constantly trying to see her married, so she leaves her childhood home quickly to "bunk" at her sister's house. I have to tell you the family dynamic is charming.
I understand Diane. This is a hardworking, witty, and intelligent female. There are tidbits of sheer genius in the text like the paragraph where she gets a call from a friend who hasn't called her in months. She wonders to herself...if she just noticed that this person has completely broken off contact with her after six months...does she really care? Another wonderful moment is when Diane tries to remember when she reached the age of No - no smoking, no drinking, no blind dates, no fat - no thank you. (Fabulous lines.) The other star of this book is the unbeatable, fun, bizarre, and charming landscape of New York City. The West Village, the real estate market - every perfect street and imperfect sidewalk makes you want to travel to the East Coast as fast as possible.

Sparkling dialogue, witty conversations, and great characters; there are two other titles by this author, and I suggest checking them out too.

Don't Make a Scene Should Be a Movie!
If Valerie Block keeps writing books as good as this one and None of Your Business, a previous novel, someone is going to make a movie based on one of them.

Diane Kurasik, the protagonist of Don't Make a Scene, is a single woman approaching "the rapids of her 40th birthday" when she receives an eviction notice from her landlord. This is a terrible blow to a renter who must compete with other desperate souls for the scarce housing available in Manhattan.

Diane is tossed from pillar to post as one promising housing solution after another falls through for one reason or another. In the meantime, she must continue to fulfill her duties as the manager of a Greenwich Village vintage cinema theatre. That situation is complicated when she falls romantically for the Cuban architect who is designing an addition to the theatre.

Valerie Block is great at describing an interesting setting, populating it with fascinating characters and keeping readers interested. The ending to this offbeat romance is quite unexpected.

Here's a bonus: Before reading this novel, my idea of Cuba was a place where people were reasonably happy with a benevolent dictator who had done great things for them. The Cuban escapees in Don't Make A Scene tell quite a different story! If you're interested in Cuba, the book is worth reading for those viewpoints alone.

A cut above the usual chick-lit fare
As an average single woman-about-town, I enjoy a good romance (read "chick-lit") as much as the next gal. I read BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY and saw the movies (both of them!), and I have worshipped at the shrine of Mr. Darcy (the ultimate chick-lit hero). But as the years roll by (and yes, mother, I still have not met Mr. Right), some of those stories start feeling a little stale. It's one thing to be adorably single and in a dead-end job when you're 29 or 30 --- but the cuteness wears thin when you're beginning to look 40 in the face.

That's the great thing about Valerie Block and her new novel, DON'T MAKE A SCENE. It's a breath of fresh air in the sometimes-stale world of modern women's fiction.

Block's heroine, Diane Kurasik, is no starry-eyed twentysomething with a dead-end job in publishing. She's 39 years old, a passionate film connoisseur with her own classic theater (the Bedford Street Cinema) and a great rent-controlled apartment in the Village. What more could a woman want? Well, true love, for one thing. Like single women everywhere, Diane bemoans the frustrations of Dating Hell:

"A man's complete attention wasn't a realistic possibility at this late stage of the game. All the generalists --- the easygoing, well-adjusted fellows such as her father, her brother-in-law, the husbands of most of her friends --- who were capable of giving their complete attention to a woman, had married before the age of thirty. The remainder tended to be specialists, obsessed with something --- often their work, but not always. In twenty-five years of dating, fifteen of them dedicated exclusively to specialists, she'd met Lactose Intolerant Man, Open Up American Trade with Vietnam Man, Blues Man, Bluegrass Man, Second Amendment Man, and Windsurf Man."

What modern woman over 30 can't relate to this?

As the charm of being single grows increasingly thin, the unthinkable happens --- Diane loses her lease on her apartment and is evicted. She hunts for a new affordable Manhattan apartment (something that, I know firsthand, can only be compared to Dante's Seventh Circle of Hell) while staying on the couches of friends. In the midst of this search, Diane begins some much-needed renovation work on her theater --- and meets the most Special Specialist of them all, Vladimir Hurtado Padrón, a sexy Cuban architect with a handful of issues, complications, a 17-year-old son, and an estranged wife in Cuba who he hasn't seen in 10 years and who refuses to give him a divorce.

Those who have read Block's previous books, WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID? and NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, are already familiar with her impeccable comic timing and well-drawn characters. Diane does not disappoint, as she has the sly wit, warm personality and slightly fractured charm that fans of Block have come to expect in their heroines. As a Cuban-American myself, I was particularly enthralled with Vladimir --- rarely have I come across a Cuban character created by a non-Cuban author who was so realistic. And Block takes a more balanced look at the situation in Cuba than one would expect in this kind of novel.

While New Yorkers will appreciate the reality of the apartment-hunting scenes more than most ("Aren't all New York stories ultimately about real estate?"), and the references to directors, film stars and classic movies of all genres will appeal especially to cinema buffs, anyone looking for an absorbing story a cut above the usual chick-lit fare will find something to love about DON'T MAKE A SCENE.

--- Reviewed by Lourdes Orive