Heart and humor are at the center of William Kotzwinkle’s novels, and this is no exception. In the days approaching Christmas, sales are down at Fontaine’s department store in New York City and Louis Fontaine isn’t happy. “My chauffeur is parked outside, reading Dostoevski. I am in here, losing a fortune.” Someone is staying in the closed store after hours and Chester Locke, the lumbering Chief of Security, is determined to catch them, even if it means wrecking the merchandise. Santa is a Bowery wino and this is the best part of his year, bringing joy to the children. The window dresser, Dann Sardos, is aiming for brilliant perfection with his Christmas window display; so much that it will probably not be ready for Christmas. A mad homeless woman, Aggie, wanders the city, the first to see the window when it does open. Louis has Officer Locke take her out two new shopping bags.

Louis Fontaine is a presciently familiar New York figure. He thinks his bad ideas are brilliant, takes credit for the good ideas that aren’t his, fires his staff constantly – then forgets he fired them and does it again. He wants “an accountant who’s ready to go to jail.”

Written in the early 1980s, Christmas at Fontaine’s paints a New York City of the near past, where the city embodied a certain twisted grittiness and madness. And more of a heart, but maybe that city only exists in fiction. ( )

A crazy little book. A take on Christmas madness and a compelling read. ( )