Review
From the book jacket: Elizabeth Gaffney’s Dickensian
Metropolis 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.
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.
Comment:
Metropolis is set in the notorious...
Beyond the Book
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).
