Review: Manhattan Triptych by Catherine Butterfield

Manhattan Triptych

by Catherine Butterfield

Release Date: October 10, 2025

2025 Westerfield Press

Softcover ARC; 363 Pages

ISBN: 979-8999291110

ASIN: B0FJSHJ1Y7

Genre: Fiction / Women's Contemporary 

Source: Review copy from Jennifer @ Book & Author Publicity

 

2.25 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

Three women meet as young actresses in a summer stock production of "Fiddler on the Roof," and go on to be the best of friends for the next four decades. Their lives diverge as they experience love, marriage, illness, adultery, loss, and even a devastating betrayal, yet somehow the friendship persists -- until one of them unexpectedly drops out of sight. Alarmed for her well-being, the other two return to Manhattan, the site of memories both euphoric and painful, to search for her. In the process of looking for her, they come to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves and their actions in the past.

The story travels back and forth in time much the way memory does, piecing together the women's friendship against the background of the AIDS crisis, the savings and loan debacle, the World Trade Center tragedy, the California wildfires, and the ever-changing face of Manhattan.

 

My Thoughts

Manhattan Triptych is the story of three women who develop a life-long friendship when they first meet on the summer-stock production of "Fiddler on the Roof". It is meant to have this sardonic look at the lives of these women as they navigate the ups and downs of their separate lives, yet manage to reconnect quite regularly to support one another when things become difficult. And while it does have this grimly mocking tone to it, I do feel it is mostly superficial as the character development doesn't go deep enough to really bring out that truly sardonic feel that I think was intended in such a novel.

 

First of all, I really did enjoy how the author interwove some interesting historical events into the story and into the personal lives of the women. Yes, there was mention of the AIDS epidemic and how it took some of their acting friends over the years, there was the World Trade Center tragedy, the fight to keep historical buildings from being destroyed in Manhattan to make way for new hotels and apartment buildings, and the wildfires in California as well as the COVID epidemic.  Yet, no matter how interesting all of these events were to the lives of the women, all of it was discussed on a superficial level and I never really felt the impact these events would have had on these women personally, even when they were involved in some of the events.  

 

The story revolved around three women, Diane, Nikki, and Orla, and while the story jumped back and forth from the present to the past so we could understand how the women formed their friendship and how it developed over the years, I personally never really understood how they were still friends after forty years.  Again, this has nothing to do with leading different lives or living in different parts of the country as I have friends like this, but we are still connected through similar activities and loyalty above all. Loyalty and honesty did not exist within this friendship, that's for sure.  And yes, I can be as judgmental as I want because if one of my closest friends did what Diane did to Nikki, I would never want to see her again in my life.  And I was supposed to feel sorry for Diane? Hell no. And Orla was just as bad, being the secret keeper of both Nikki and Diane's secrets.  And this is where I differed in my opinion of the character development as I thought it was one-dimensional, without a lot of depth to any of these women. None of them changed an iota throughout the book, but just became older images of the younger selves. I would have liked to have seen some personal growth, some development, some compassion for what others were going through, but these women were very much about themselves.

 

Verdict

Manhattan Triptych was interesting in the sense the story was woven around some very unique times in Manhattan, and as a history buff, I always love reading about those changing times.  But the plot was slow and the character development was non-existent. And I love to read sardonic stories; I devoured Terry Pratchett, Dorothy Parker, Evelyn Waugh, and Tom Holt so reading something with sardonic humour was definitely not the issue. Personally, I felt the commentary just wasn't wry enough, nor sardonic enough and the lack of character development to make the characters more sympathetic affected the overall tone of the book.