Cobble Hill by Cecily von Ziegesar review: Gossip Girl for grown ups

For certain members of my generation, Gossip Girl is less a phenomenally successful teen book series and more, thanks to the 2007 TV show, a cultural touchstone. And while the appeal of Cecily von Ziegesar’s Upper East Side brats has yet to wane among millennials, now that her readers are all grown-up, so too are her latest subjects – even if they still act like teenagers.

In her hugely enjoyable Cobble Hill, her first novel for adults, von Ziegesar’s sharp social eye falls on the inhabitants of a wealthy, brownstone-lined neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Roy Clarke is a famous author (“Bridget Jones meets Waiting for Godot”), married to the snobbish Wendy, an editor at “one of the few fashion magazines still in print”. Their neighbour is Stuart Little, a former rock star whose wife Mandy is faking having MS so that she can stay in bed all day. Both Roy and Stuart have a crush on the cool school nurse Peaches – who also fancies Stuart. Her teenage son Liam fancies Roy’s daughter Shy. Shy fancies her hairy Latin teacher.

Chucked into this mix of middle-class hang-ups are the completely absurd Tupper Paulson and his artist wife Elizabeth, 6ft tall and usually dressed in vinyl. Their sole function is to bring everyone and everything they’re hiding together for a karaoke night. After all, Cobble Hill isn’t the big city, it’s “a very small village where nothing went unnoticed”.

There are too many good details to list – the teenager charging $900 hoodies to his housekeeper’s credit card, the Bonfire Night inspired by Meghan and Harry, the Ovidian description of the Latin teacher’s gaze shooting out “arrows of love that bullseyed her heart, almost knocking her out of her chair”, Roy Clarke absorbing the Brooklyn bedlam around him into a weird teenage space romp.  Cobble Hill is largely plotless, which isn’t a criticism. Rather, von Ziegesar tracks, with humour and vim, the bumbling chaos wrought by a group of people who are sweetly self-absorbed and thus desperately lonely.

Cobble Hill by Cecily von Ziegesar is published by Orion at £13.99. To order your copy for £10.99 visit Telegraph Books