Metropolis - Hardcover

Gaffney, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400061504 ISBN 13: 9781400061501

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"* 'Gaffney has engineered a thrilling Brooklyn Bridge of a novel, at once old-fashioned and utterly modern, grand and charming, elegant and massive, imposing and delightful, carrying us in inimitable style across the rich, rank waters of New York City's history.' Michael Chabon * A wonderful recreation of the heady world into which so many Irish emigrants arrived to build new lives for themselves 150 years ago.' Irish Independent * '[An] engrossing tale of crime and romance...[a] splendidly bleak portrayal of the mid-Victorian city's underbelly' Guardian * 'A sprawling epic of a novel... this good old fashioned ripping yarn told with no little zest.' Glasgow Herald"

From the Publisher:

A hugely entertaining and richly realised literary historical first novel, set in the New York underworld of the 1860s, in the tradition of Caleb Carr's The Alienist and Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White.

'Mesmerizing... An extraordinary achievement' Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400061504
• ISBN 13: 9781400061501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 458