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Metropolis
A Novel
by Elizabeth Gaffney
The Paris Review editor makes her fiction debut with this epic novel set in 1860s New York City.
Random House, 480 pages
03/01/2005
$24.95
ISBN: 1400061504
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
Historical Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Booklist Donna Seaman
In spite of the sense that Gaffney is working her way down a historical checklist, her fascination with technical advances, street life, social reform, and odd real-life events infuses this big, busy, imaginative, atmospheric, and compulsively readable historical novel (and remarkably capable debut) with a tantalizing energy. [1 Jan 2005, p.814]
Library Journal Eleanor J. Bader
An engaging and suspenseful work--and required reading for anyone interested in urban affairs or simply in need of a good, stick-to-the-ribs escape from today's sociopolitical realities. [1 Jan 2005, p.95]
Publishers Weekly
While it never attains the narrative urgency of Doctorow's evocations of 19th-century New York, the novel's well-researched historical background, enlivened by descriptions of the criminal underworld and the off-beat love story, should ensure wide interest.
The Guardian Rachel Hore
Engrossing tale of crime and romance.
Entertainment Weekly Gilbert Cruz
While most of Metropolis' characters are unchanging and one-dimensional, Gaffney's complex treatment of a city on the verge of greatness more than compensates.
The New York Times Janet Maslin
It's a thick, scrappy book with no fear of anachronism -- or of anything else, for that matter. And Ms. Gaffney gives it the unstoppable vigor of a weed in concrete, one that shoots up where it shouldn't and branches out in any way it pleases.
The New Yorker
Despite an occasional stylistic anachronism, the novel is, like New York itself, satisfyingly dense and complex.
Daily Telegraph Judith Flanders
Gaffney is a writerly writer, and her research never weighs heavily. The reader is compelled to turn each page, to find out what happens next, to taste, to feel, to hear and - especially - to smell New York 150 years ago.
Kirkus Reviews
Luther alone is worth the price of admission, but there's much more to like in Gaffney's rip-roaring, agreeably ungainly, outrageously entertaining tale.
Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
Echoing Dickens but lacking the full bite of his ironism and wit, Gaffney has also made this novel something of a social critique. [10 Apr 2005, p.C3]
The New York Times Book Review Max Byrd
Serious historical fiction aims, among other things, to bring lost realities to mind. In the end, we see the realities of Elizabeth Gaffney's metropolis vividly but fitfully, too often at a distance and through a gauze of words.
Washington Post Jonathan Yardley
Elizabeth Gaffney gets full credit for an honorable effort, but Metropolis too often is a snooze.
Los Angeles Times Kevin Baker
Metropolis is undermined by Gaffney's resolute indifference to the social realities of life in post-Civil War New York -- or to the physical realities of life, period. [27 Feb 2005, p.R9]
 The average user rating for this book is 3.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
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