Doctorow, E.L. World’s Fair. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1985.
This is another challenge book that I read out of order. It was supposed to be on the July list. The only reason for this out-of-orderness was I didn’t plan very well. Technically, I have two Early Review books and four challenge books on the way but…you guessed it, none of them are here yet. I needed something to read over the weekend after finally, finally unpacking from the trip, while waiting for laundry (seven loads) to cycle and while Kisa was at a Patriots game. While this was a chore chocked weekend I needed to do my own thing, too. Nothing beats uninterrupted reading!
World’s Fair is the brilliant story of a boy named Edgar and his life in the 1930’s in New York City. Spanning Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, all senses come alive with Doctorow’s descriptive narrative. From the bustling, noisy market places to the quieter mom & pop shops; from the silent synagogues to the crowded beaches of Rockaway, New York is on display through the eyes of a child. Edgar is the youngest brother in a musical family. As he grows up, goes to school and becomes more aware of the world around him, politics and economics become less abstract and more of a reality in his day to day life. He sees his parents not getting along, his brother becoming more adult (and less fun), grandparents getting frailer, and finally, his own life becoming more complicated.
I thoroughly enjoyed World’s Fair. It was a clean, straightforward book with lots of vivid description and emotion. Most of the time Edgar tells the story, but intermittently his mother Rose, or brother Donald will step in for a chapter. Even an aunt has a moment in the story.
Favorite lines: “I am roused from sleep in one instant from glutinous sleep to grieving awareness” (p 4), “My mother ran our home and our lives with a kind of tactless administration that often left a child with bruised feelings, though an indelible understanding of right and wrong” (p 13), “this was her way, to express concern from opposite sides of the crisis” (p 27), and “I lived in the weather of my mother’s spirit, and at these times, after these visits, the sky grew black” (p 96).
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “New York, New York” (p 170).
We have decided to take one last musical road trip.
Baker, Kevin. Dreamland. New York: Harper Collins, 1999.
Konecky, Edith. Allegra Maud Goldman. New York: The Feminist Press, 1990.
~*LunaSea*~ 