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Summary
Summary
One whirlwind week of love, blackmail, and betrayal follows three brothers through teeming prewar New York in this "entertaining . . . outsized . . . big, expressive debut" ( Wall Street Journal ).
June 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother, Michael, are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin's home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family's revolutionary past.
When Tom Cronin, an erstwhile assassin forced into one last job, tracks the brothers down, their lives begin to fracture. Francis must surrender to blackmail or have his family suffer fatal consequences. Michael, lost and wandering alone, turns to Lilly Bloch, a heartsick artist, to recover his decimated memory. And Martin and his wife, Rosemary, try to salvage their marriage and, ultimately, the lives of the other Dempseys. Meanwhile, with the Depression receding, all of New York is suffused with an electric feeling of hope, caught up in the fervor of the World's Fair and eager for good times after a decade of deprivation.
From the smoky jazz joints of Harlem to the opulent Plaza Hotel, from the garrets of vagabonds and artists in the Bowery to the backroom warrens and shadowy warehouses of mobsters in Hell's Kitchen, Brendan Mathews brings the prewar metropolis to vivid, pulsing life. The sweeping, intricate, and ambitious storytelling throughout this remarkable debut reveals an America that blithely hoped it could avoid another catastrophic war and focus instead on the promise of the World's Fair: a peaceful, prosperous "World of Tomorrow."
One whirlwind week of love, blackmail, and betrayal following three brothers through teeming prewar New York in this "entertaining . . . outsized . . . big, expressive debut" ( Wall Street Journal )
"A masterfully crafted novel . . . Comic, violent, and moving in equal measure."-John Irving
"As rich and raucous as the city it celebrates."- O., The Oprah Magazine
"Admirably fearless . . . Mathews has talent in buckets."- New York Times Book Review
Author Notes
Brendan Mathews , a Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, has published stories in Glimmer Train , the Virginia Quarterly Review , and the Cincinnati Review , among other publications, and his fiction has twice appeared in The Best American Short Stories . He lives with his wife and four children in Lenox, Massachusetts, and teaches at Bard College at Simon's Rock.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Three Irish brothers tumble through New York during an eventful two weeks in June 1939, in Mathews's masterful debut novel. Francis, temporarily released to attend his father's funeral from the prison where he was being held for distributing pornographic literature, is in possession of some IRA cash he bungled into in the wake of a bomb blast. Francis has conceived an audacious plan to make it to America posing as a Scottish aristocrat, and is turning a few American heiresses' heads in the process. With him is his brother Michael, on leave from the seminary for the same funeral, who was shell-shocked by the explosion that netted Francis his money and has struck up a friendship with the ghost of Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Their older brother, Martin, is already in New York, where he is trying to make a living as a jazz musician, to the chagrin of his politically connected in-laws. Once reunited, the brothers are pursued by Cronin, a former IRA hit man who has retired to a farm on the Hudson River, and his menacing boss Gavigan, who concocts a sinister plan involving the visit of the British royalty to the World's Fair being held at that time in New York. Despite its length, this novel is a remarkably fast and exhilarating read, reminiscent of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Like a juggler keeping multiple balls in the air, Mathews regularly adds new characters and their complicated stories to the volatile mix, without losing track of the original ones. With the wit of a '30s screwball comedy and the depth of a thoroughly researched historical novel, this one grabs the reader from the beginning to its suspenseful climax. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Francis Dempsey, on furlough from prison to attend his father's funeral with his seminarian brother Michael, escapes with help from the IRA. When an accidental explosion at a safe house-and-bomb factory leaves three dead and Michael shell-shocked, Francis books passage for him and Michael, posing as Scottish royalty and aided in their ruse by a trunk full of stolen IRA money. The plan is to reunite with eldest brother Martin, who is trying to make a name for himself in the burgeoning New York jazz scene while struggling to support his wife and young children. Francis sets to courting the daughter of an industrial titan, while impaired Michael, accompanied by the ghost of William Butler Yeats, gets lost in the city and befriended by Lily Bloch, a Czech photographer hoping to delay her return to Nazi-occupied Prague. The IRA wants its money back, but the local boss sees an opportunity to use Francis and his assumed aristocratic identity in an assassination plot when English royalty visit the 1939 World's Fair, dubbed the World of Tomorrow. As everything rolls toward an adrenaline-fueled finale, Mathews brilliantly creates characters who embody the esprit de corps of immigrants and movingly explores themes of class, society, race, and family. For fans of Michael Chabon and E. L. Doctorow.--Kelly, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
DEBUT Creative writing and literature professor Mathews's (Bard Coll. at Simon's Rock) first novel is all you could want in a piece of popular fiction. The tension never lets up, and the story is fast and mind--spinningly complicated. The many characters are well fleshed out; with few exceptions, you care about them. In 1939, storm clouds are gathering across the Atlantic, but the New York World's Fair promises an exciting future ("Asbestos: The Miracle Mineral," proclaims one exhibit). This massive yet charming book delivers guns and explosives, an elaborate con perpetrated on a rich New York family by a fake Scottish laird who's really a runaway Irish convict hunted by the IRA, menacings galore, and a man who threatens to kill anyone who stands in his way. There's suspense, humor, love, of both the doomed and requited varieties, and even a ghost of the poet William -Butler Yeats. VERDICT This novel should prove irresistible to anyone wanting a diverting read. It's quality stuff-and fun. [See Prepub Alert, 4/1/17.]-David Keymer, Modesto, CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.