City on Fire
The biggest problem I am facing in reviewing City on Fire is that I am not sure what I could have to add to the wealth of commentary on the it book of late 2015. Despite all the buzz, overall I found City on Fire to be a really good novel, but not one that was necessarily mind-blowing. This 911 page love letter to the New York City of the late 1970s was meticulously researched and the city was beautifully described. The plot was strong and the apparently disparate characters' stories were all nicely entwined by the end. However, as has been pointed out by basically everyone, the book could use some serious editing. I think the same beauty and great story could be been captured with at least a 200 page – probably 300 page – cut. There was too much time spent on minor characters that did not add a lot to the total experience and in some cases, as was the case with Regan, despite the plethora of detail, some characters weren't developed sufficiently. I think what stands as the best example of this was that despite being a lovely book with an intriguing story, I found myself putting City on Fire down quite often to read other books. This is a very rare occurrence in my reading life and it says something is a bit weird about City on Fire. Nonetheless, one absolutely astounding aspect in City on Fire was Hallberg's ability to perfectly capture the thought processes and dialogues of adolescents/young adults. The inane philosophical discussions where every concept seems newly discovered and the emotional reactions to culture and events were absolutely spot-on. While I was never a punk, nor old enough to be contemporary with any of his characters, it was all too easy to hear my 18 year-old self participating in conversations with Charlie, Sam, and the Post-Humanists. Coupling this verisimilitude with Hallberg's impressive style definitely makes City on Fire a knock-out novel. Recommended.
