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A Novel
by Elizabeth Gaffney
Book Reviewed by:Captures the splendor and violence of New York in the years after the Civil War, as young immigrants climb out of urban chaos and into the American dream.
Elizabeth Gaffney’s magnificent, Dickensian Metropolis captures the splendor and violence of America’s greatest city in the years after the Civil War, as young immigrants climb out of urban chaos and into the American dream.
On a freezing night in the middle of winter, Gaffney’s nameless hero is suddenly awakened by a fire in P. T. Barnum’s stable, where he works and sleeps, and soon finds himself at the center of a citywide arson investigation.
Determined to clear his name and realize the dreams that inspired his hazardous voyage across the Atlantic, he will change his identity many times, find himself mixed up with one of the city’s toughest and most enterprising gangs, and fall in love with a smart, headstrong, and beautiful young woman. Buffeted by the forces of fate, hate, luck, and passion, our hero struggles to build a life–just to stay alive–in a country that at first held so much promise for him.
Epic in sweep, Metropolis follows our hero from his arrival in New York harbor through his experiences in Barnum’s circus, the criminal underground, and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and on to a life in Brooklyn that is at once unique and poignantly emblematic of the American experience. In a novel that is wonderfully written, rich in suspense, vivid historical detail, breathtakingly paced, Elizabeth Gaffney captures the wonder and magic of a rambunctious city in a time of change. Metropolis marks a superb fiction debut.
In case you wonder, Gaffney tells me that the hero of her story, Frank Harris, is not intended to be a fictionalized version of the Irish author and editor, Frank Harris (1851-1931), author of "My Life & Loves". She chose the name simply because she liked it and it was a common name of the time...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Elizabeth Gaffney is an advisory editor of The Paris Review, teaches writing at New York University and has translated a number of German novels into English. Her short fiction has appeared in North American Review, Colorado Review, Brooklyn Review, Mississippi Review, The Reading Room, and Epiphany. Metropolis is her first novel. She is also the author and narrator of a 'City Reads' guide, The Brooklyn Bridge: From City To Metropolis (2004).
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An irresistible novel set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and based on the real life of Tom Thumb, a young man only twenty-five inches tall.
Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever
Elizabeth Gaffney’s Metropolis is vibrant, richly detailed, and compellingly plotted. The territory of her late-nineteenth-century underworld resembles that of Herbert Asbury’s The Gangs of New York or Frederick Busch’s The Night Inspector–but the sensibility is all her own, and her characters are unforgettable.
