Staff Pick
This ambitious first novel set in 1970s New York City features an array of fascinating characters from a variety of backgrounds with entangled connections, agendas, and stories — with a mystery at its core. City on Fire is an engaging snapshot of a place in time, and a dazzling debut of epic proportions. Recommended By Jen C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William
Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes;
Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie
and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene;
an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor — and the
detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a
shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
The mystery, as it
reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power,
will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And
when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness,
each of these lives will be changed forever.
City on Fire is
an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about
art and truth and rock ’n’ roll: about what people need from each other
in order to live... and about what makes the living worth doing in
the first place.
Review
“A remarkably assured, multivalent tale...an epic panorama of
musicians, writers, and power brokers and the surprising ways they
connect....At times the novel feels like a metafictional tribute to
America’s finest doorstop manufacturers, circa 1970 to the present:
Price (street-wise cops), Wolfe (top-tier wealth), Franzen (busted
families), Wallace (the seductions of drugs and pop culture), and
DeLillo (the unseen forces behind everything)....As his various
plotlines braid tighter during the July 1977 blackout, his novel becomes
an ambitious showpiece for just how much the novel can contain without
busting apart.” Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Review
“Completely engrossing....This magnificent first novel is full to
bursting with plot, character, and emotion, all set within an
exquisitely grungy 1970s New York City....Graceful in execution,
hugely entertaining, and most concerned with the longing for connection,
a theme that reaches full realization during the blackout of 1977, this
epic tale is both a compelling mystery and a literary tour de force.” Booklist (starred)
Review
“Epic, well-written, and highly entertaining....Throughout, Hallberg
expertly handles the multiple shifts in perspective, vibrantly
portraying a specific time and place and creating memorable characters.” Library Journal (starred)
Review
“Good news for the American novel: City on Fire lives up to the hype. It’s a sprawling, deeply lived-in, thoroughly accessible fresco in the tradition of Dickens.” Dallas Morning News
Review
“Thrilling...brings gritty 1970s Manhattan to life....A kind of punk Bleak House....An exuberant, Zeitgeisty New York novel, like The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Emperor’s Children, or The Goldfinch.” Megan O’Grady, Vogue
Review
“To a person who did live in New York in the nineteen-seventies — to wit,
this person — Hallberg’s powers of evocation are uncanny . . . It’s not
the facts that bring the nineteen-seventies to life in City on Fire. What Hallberg is after is an atmosphere, and he gets it.” Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Review
“Hallberg writes with style and sophistication about everything from
urban decay and punk rock to domestic terrorism and the dissolution of
the nuclear family, seamlessly melding disparate character arcs, and
deploying a host of storytelling modes in the process....It’s
exciting to see a writer start his career with such an extravagant
display of talent and assurance.” San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Locating the best of times within the worst of times is no mean trick,
especially in a historical novel where the history is recent enough that
many readers remember firsthand just how bad those times were. That’s
the delicate and ultimately moving balancing act that Garth Risk
Hallberg pulls off in City on Fire....His talent is as
conspicuous as the book’s heft. There’s rarely a less than finely honed
sentence or a moment when you don’t feel that a sophisticated
intelligence is at work....[The climax] is a tour de force.” Frank Rich, New York Times Book Review
Review
“Dazzling....City on Fire is an extraordinary performance.... Hallberg inhabits the minds of whites and blacks, men and women, old
and young, gay and straight with equal fidelity... making every one
of them thrum with real life....And what endlessly fascinating
characters they are!...[The novel’s] Whitmanesque arms embrace an
entire city of lovers and strivers, saints and killers.” Ron Charles, Washington Post
Review
“The year’s most exciting fiction debut....A book that is truly that
great, rare thing: a wholly inhabitable universe, reflecting back our
lives while also offering an exhilarating escape from them.” Rolling Stone
Review
“A novel of head-snapping ambition and heart-stopping power — a novel
that attests to its young author’s boundless and unflagging talents.” Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
About the Author
Garth Risk Hallberg was born in Louisiana and grew up in North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Best New American Voices 2008, and, most frequently, The Millions; a novella, A Field Guide to the North American Family, was published in 2007. He lives in New York with his wife and children.
Garth Risk Hallberg on PowellsBooks.Blog
Very early on — it's hard to say which is the chicken and which is the egg — I was a voracious reader. Reading was not just an escape or a Band-Aid; it was a deep form of feeling seen and recognized, and being able to see and recognize other kindred spirits...
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