Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2015
944 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An immersive, exuberant, boundary-vaulting novel.
New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown's punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor - and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year's Eve.
The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever.
City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock 'n' roll: about what people need from each other in order to live ... and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place.
"Starred Review. At times the novel feels like a metafictional tribute to America's finest doorstop manufacturers, circa 1970 to the present...That's not to say he's written a pastiche, but as his various plotlines braid tighter during the July 1977 blackout, his novel becomes an ambitious showpiece for just how much the novel can contain without busting apart. The very-damn-good American novel." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Graceful in execution, hugely entertaining, and most concerned with the longing for connection, a theme that reaches full realization during the blackout of 1977, this epic tale is both a compelling mystery and a literary tour de force." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Throughout, Hallberg expertly handles the multiple shifts in perspective, vibrantly portraying a specific time and place and creating memorable characters - especially Charlie and Regan, a complicated mess of a poor little rich girl who manages to be heroic in her own way - all wandering the vast, ongoing American dreamscape that is New York City." - Library Journal
"Hallberg's maniacally detailed, exhaustingly clever depiction of 1970s New York is packed with urban angst, intellectual energy, and sinister pitfalls, much like the city it evokes." - Publishers Weekly
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