The Jolly Corner Summary

After living in Europe for thirty-three years, Spencer Brydon returns to New York, to live in his boyhood home on a jolly corner. The fifty-six-year-old man decides to renovate a second house that he has inherited, converting it into apartments that will generate more income. The rents from the two homes have enabled him to live comfortably in Europe all these years. Brydon is astounded by the changes in New York in the third of a century that he has been gone. Things he used to find ugly now charm him. The famous, modern improvements he often finds repulsive. Yet some things are unchanged, like his dear friend, the gentle, artistic Miss Staverton.

Brydon finds that he has an aptitude for overseeing the renovations of the second house into a large apartment building. He wonders how he would have...