My
New Year's resolution...blog! No, I didn't stop reading. I just
stopped writing about it. The books stacked up but the words just
rattled around in my head. The start of my troubles was probably
when I tackled Garth Risk Hallberg's City
on Fire
– all 911 pages of it. By the end I was exhausted and overwhelmed.
How to get down on paper (figuratively) my thoughts on this
sprawling, complicated story? The setting is New York of the
1970's. The city is approaching bankruptcy, drug addiction is
rampant, punk rock and the rad art scene are emerging, the rich are
getting richer by making their own rules. Hallberg puts a character
in every one of these camps - young, old, black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor.
They are all fleshed out human beings, complicated and compelling.
The center of the story is the murder of a a young NYU student in
Central Park on New Year's Eve, but in Dickensian fashion Hallberg
weaves interconnected subplots, flashbacks and flashforwards,
coffee-stained reporters notes and teenage zines into a staggering
story that climaxes with the July 13, 1977 New York City blackout.
The
characters belong to such different social strata that it seems each
of their stories is separate strand, and yet by the end they are all
braided together in ways that I didn't see coming, but didn't feel
forced or artificial. This is Hallberg's first novel. I can't wait
to see what comes next.
