City on Fire

De minpunten uit de recensies kloppen wel: kan wel wat dunner, en alle personages als ze praten lijken wel wat op elkaar ongeacht achtergrond. (ze klinken als een schrijver die van mooie woorden houdt). Maar dit niet-lineaire verhaal (de periodes worden ongeveer steeds korter) over het New York van de jaren zeventig, toen het verre van gentrified was, met een poging tot moord als een soort van onderliggend verhaal (maar ook punks, vuurwerk en upper upper class) in één ruk uitgelezen. De ingebouwde dictionary / Wikipedia van m'n Kindle was wel handig...

3.5 Well ... I finished/sadzMy expectations, particularly after the first two or three hundred pages, and the ultimate whole of the novel did not meet in a happy place. The bulk or rather the focal part of the story goes from November 1976 to July 14th 1977 and each chapter alternates between the POV of about eight characters presenting a quasi panoramic view NYC and it's denizens. It was a particularly epic time: the bicentennial had just passed, the city was bankrupt, Gerald Ford had told us to “drop dead”, the punks were here and their aesthetic was a thing, the Bronx was literally burning, SoHo was the place for scrappy art galleries, and LES/LowerEastSide/Loisada was awash in drugs. What I'm saying is that this era is fertile ground for riveting stories and at first I felt the author was going to deliver, a la [b:The Bonfire of the Vanities 2666 The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542903489l/2666.SY75.jpg 1080201], however that wasn't the case.The problem IMO is that inordinate amount of narrative space is given over to characters that are interesting to no one. Not even themselves. We spend hundreds of pages in the head of a seventeen year old Long Island teen, who's reasonably appealing, as much as a teen can be, but then he falls under the spell of a navel gazing proto-anarchist with quarter backed political ideas (the result of narcissism on drugs) and his acolytes. We spend ice ages in their boring, yawn inducing company. My eyes glazed over more than once. Meanwhile Mercer Goodman and William Hamilton-Sweeney, the characters that hooked me, the evidently interesting ones through which it would be feasible to explore this New World from two vastly different perspectives, are almost shuffled off stage. Inexplicable. I hope that if this ever gets adapted as a tv miniseries, and I thing it should, the writers can fix that. I hope.On the plus side (and what makes the disappointment sadder) the city is rendered with the eye of a native, the writing was excellent, almost cinematic, and I learned quite a few words. My favorite? intercrural sex

???Sometimes you weren???t yet the person you needed to be to do the work you needed to do.???

3.5

This is a whale of a book, that's for sure. It's 900 pages of character explorations, the city of New York being a character in and of itself. Or, that's what it was supposed to be. It surely is an intriguing piece of non-linear narrative but despite having spent over 900 pages with these characters, I had a difficult time really caring about any of them. Or caring enough, at least.

The underlying story felt a little too wobbly to keep the entire thing afloat. It felt just a little too set up for me to go along with it (though maybe I should have expected that set up, given the supposed but slightly unrealistic interconnectedness of all the characters). A girl gets shot on New Year's Eve and A Lot of Things Happen.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this was a good book. It was told in an interesting way (I really liked the way the interludes functioned as quick glimpses of sides of the story), surrounded a set of big events (the murder, the blackout of ‘77) and featured a wide range of characters (that still didn't really seem to be able to find their own voices) but it kept me too much at a distance to really get invested.

Great book, could have been 30% shorter

This should have been right up my street. I love massive multi viewpoint novels, but this one is curiously uninvolving. There just isn't enough plot or character to sustain such a mighty pile of vocabulary. I made it to the end, but it was a slog.

It had a lot of potential–New York, the 70s, frequent Patti Smith references. Yet, so tedious, and there is just too much of it. Didn't care for the gimmicky bits, either, such as the inclusion of a full issue of a fanzine and handwritten/typewritten documents. Whatevs.

That was a slog to get through, in the main. Parts of this book I really loved and some of it felt like chore. I admire the ambition but, for me, it didn't deliver totally

I feel bad giving this only 3 stars because Hallberg is a hell of a writer (I very rarely feel envious of other people's talents but man, he makes it look so effortless and new). The first 500-600 pages alone were worth all the hype. Unfortunately, it kinda falls apart after that.

I get it, it's hard to maintain perfect control over a 900+ page monster that includes a panoramic cast of characters, multiple timelines and painstakingly researched historical background. But Hallberg's characters at some point lose all definition. They also become boring :/ The plot drags on and on and on in the end (which in this case is roughly 300 pages long) and the only big reveal – whose voice it was that opened the story – is just not worth the carpal tunnel. The old adage that every sentence in a story should move the plot forward applies to at least 30% of this.

Disappointed, but will give Hallberg all the chances anyway because he's a super talented dude.