- Hardcover: 496 pages
- Publisher: William Heinemann (7 April 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0434013315
- ISBN-13: 978-0434013319
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.2 x 4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,046,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
A hugely entertaining first novel, set in the New York underworld of the 1860s, in the tradition of Caleb Carr's The Alienist and The Gangs of New York.'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
Product Description
'The age of cast iron had not yet begun, but by 1868, you could feel a growth spurt of some sort coming on, you could sense it in the wide open sky. Steamships were edging out the tall ships, ripping out the threads of the way things had once been done. You could say the city's extraordinary nature lurked, in those days. It was biding its time, waiting for just the right moment to surge forward and change into something bigger, newer, better.'Arriving in New York in 1868, on the run from a scandal - or perhaps a crime - back in his native Hamburg, our hero, travelling under the name of Georg Geiermeier, becomes a stableboy, tending circus-owner Barnum's menagerie, until he is framed for an arson attack and finds himself once again is on the run. Falling into the hands of the Whyos, a gang who communicate with each other by means of a complicated system of songs and calls, he is reborn as an Irish labourer and takes a job as a sewerman, unaware of the part in crime the Whyos have in mind for him. Happy in his new job and falling in love with Beatrice, the young Irishwoman the Whyos have selected to teach him Irish English, all seems well, until the gang's leader chooses Beatrice as his First Girl and the criminal plans of the Whyos begin to become clear-Set in a richly realised nineteenth-century New York, a world of crime, corruption, prostitution and disease, Elisabeth Gaffney's debut is a hugely entertaining, irresistibly readable story of love and crime. (20040315)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Crooks Tour of the maximum city,
By
This review is from: Metropolis (Paperback)
Ever wish you could have lived in a simpler time? Well this very entertaining first novel might cause you to scratch one possible destination from your list.
The story revolves around a newly arrived immigrant in late 19th century New York. We follow him as he tries to make a life for himself in the land of new beginnings. Almost from his arrival he is seen as a useful stooge by a number of the city's different gang factions & spends the majority of the book under their influence or trying to escape from it. On his journey he moves from beneath the city streets to the heights of the one of the greatest architectural marvels of the day. This allows us to experience the sights & sounds of a unique city in a way that's still only really possible in historical fiction. Elizabeth Gaffney has a strong, stylish voice which is in keeping with the book's setting & period. The engaging & original characters coupled with the unflagging story make for a very enjoyable novel & there's a real sense of her characters having a chance to shape their destinies through sheer force of will, if they can just manage to survive long enough.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews) 18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well written, fluid novel of old NY,
By D. C. Palter "literary curmudgeon" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Metropolis (Paperback)
In its essence, Metropolis is a love story between a German immigrant in NYC in the late 1800's and the teenage wife of the Irish gang leader.
Though earnest, honest, and hard-working, Harris is on the run from the law for a crime he didn't commit. The Irish gang takes him to use for their own nefarious purposes, and assigns Beatrice the job of turning him into a credible Irishman to avoid the police and other gangs. The story is minutely researched, and brings in real people from the era, including the main character himself, mentioned in David McCullough's "The Great Bridge" as a worker who fell off the Brooklyn Bridge during construction and lived. The historical detail is used well, adding a strong sense of an almost magical place of heroic bridges overhead, secret sewer tunnels below, an era of vicious but honorable gangs counterbalancing the venality of the police and municipal adminstration. But Gaffeny never gets bogged down in these details, using them only to complement the intertwined stories of Harris and Beatrice. The novel reminded me of "A Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin, about a thief and set during the same period, and obviously pulls extensive detail from "The Gangs of NY." Overall, very enjoyable to read and highly recommended. 19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sprawl,
By Newton Munnow "Newton Munnow" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Metropolis (Hardcover)
There is much to be admired in the 450 pages of Metropolis, a story of post Civil War New York. Unfortunately, the admirable would have fitted into 200 odd pages, leaving the reader wading through an extra half a book. Gaffney's done her research. Unlike Kevin Baker's hyperkinetic Dreamland, Gaffney does a fine job sorting 19th Century New York myths from reality. If only she'd been harder on herself. Too often you'll find a moment of genuine drama slowed to an unbearable pace. For instance, Gaffney reckons the middle of a life-threatening fire is a good time for a quick literary tour of Barnum's circus. Instead of reading on, this reader thought the fire was a fine place to put the book down for the night. In other words, Gaffney doesn't know when to let the story flow and when to occasionally indulge herself. It makes the book seem heavier than it should be, unravelling all the months of research that must have gone into it. Yet it's hard to forgive an author who strives so hard for historical realism and then punctures her own balloon with anachronisms. Would a stable hand really think that he 'identified' with a horse 150 years ago? Whichever editor let this book slip out should have their fingers rapped. Another few months of work might have produced something memorable, but you get the feeling that a book this heavy can only sink like a stone.
32 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
More Aptly "Necropolis",
By Gary Griffiths - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Metropolis (Hardcover)
While slogging through some 450 pages of "Metropolis", the reader may wonder exactly what Elizabeth Gaffney is trying to convey in this plodding saga of post-Civil War New York City. At its core, it is the tale of a young German immigrant on the lam after being framed in the arson of P.T. Barnum's American Museum. He soon finds himself in the throws of the "Whyos", a secret Irish gang of New York's infamous Five Points, through which he finds work first on a road crew, later as a sewer man of New York's famed subterranean maze, and finally as a member of the construction crew building the Brooklyn Bridge. Such ambitious fare certainly holds much promise for the historical novel fan, but Gaffney clutters the plot and the history with a ham handed dose of feminism and related social topics. To make matters worse, the utopian Whyos who, we are to believe, have maintained their stealth and secrecy by communicating through a complex language of song. While Gaffney portrays the Whyos as tough and ruthless, these ludicrous singing bandits seem closer to "The West Side Story" than to "The Gangs of New York." Our young German hero - let's call him Frank Harris - the last of his several aliases - falls in love with the redoubtable Beatrice: pickpocket, whore, sometime murderer, and mol of the Whyos boss. But in Gaffney's New York, girls like Beatrice are the salt of society, the true brains and fabric of both legal and illegal New York, held back only by men and the puritanical Victorian social mores of the day.
The book could have survived all of this, were it not for Gaffney's total lack of atmosphere, suspense, or pace in the story. Fires, explosions, murders, are conveyed with the drama of a Brooklyn Bridge machinery technical manual, and while despite endless pages describing the thoughts and feeling of Frank and Beatrice, they stir as much inspiration as a trip with Gaffney through New York's sewers. From the breathless praise lavished by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and others, "Metropolis" was a novel I was really looking forward to devouring. It is unfortunate that this book was so well received critically, but I suspect the reviewers were more enthralled with Gaffney's oh-so politically correct social commentary than in any true literary or entertainment talent. Boring, disjointed, and unfocused, in the final analysis "Metropolis" is a good book to leave on the trolley. |
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