Desolation Row - and a version of pastoral? - in Ten Thousand Saints

Eleanor Henderson's "Ten Thousand Saints" does grow on you - have just finished the first half of the book (Sad Song) - I am very impressed with her ability to evoke the look, feel, smell, and mood of New York City streets in the 80s, edgy and dangerous and much rougher around the edges than NYC today, the subways reeking and covered in tags and trash, scary guys on every corner who could rob you in a flash or just easily fall over dead. I've tried to evoke New York of a slightly earlier era - the early 70s - and touched on many of the facets that Henderson develops - the krishnas, the crappy phone booths long gone, the pathetic parks - and she outdoes me. Her New York is the closest in fiction that I've come to the crazy village metropolis that Dylan often evokes, as in Positively 4th Street, Like a Rolling Stone, and most especially Desolation Row - well, she's not at that level, but music always gets to us at a more intense and subliminal level. As to the novel itself, I am pleased that by the end of part 1 there seems to be at least one mature adult, or near-adult, character who's not entirely selfish and has the welfare of another in his heart and mind - I hope the novel doesn't turn sappy and sentimental on us in its second half in which, it appears, the main characters will return to Vermont (a version of pastoral?).