Reviews
Vogue "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 ." Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Bookforum "Engrossing . . . When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night's Dream , Manhattan edition . . . As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg's heroes are theorists of their own universe . . . Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . . The story itself is dramatic, intermixing a police procedural with a terrorist plot, an addiction plot, an art plot, various adultery plots . . . The result is a narrative that is immense." Vanity Fair "A soaring debut . . . Over the course of Hallberg's magisterial epic, distinctions of class, race, geography, and generation give way to an impression of the human condition that is both ambitious and sublime." Library Journal (starred) "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." Booklist (starred) "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." Kirkus Reviews (starred) "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.", Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Bookforum "Engrossing . . . When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night's Dream , Manhattan edition . . . As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg's heroes are theorists of their own universe . . . Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . . The story itself is dramatic, intermixing a police procedural with a terrorist plot, an addiction plot, an art plot, various adultery plots . . . The result is a narrative that is immense." Vanity Fair "A soaring debut . . . Over the course of Hallberg's magisterial epic, distinctions of class, race, geography, and generation give way to an impression of the human condition that is both ambitious and sublime." Library Journal (starred) "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." Booklist (starred) "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." Kirkus Reviews (starred) "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.", "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 " City on Fire is a spectacular debut." --Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven " City on Fire is a big, stunning first novel and an amazing virtual reality machine, whisking us back to New York City in the 1970s with bravura swagger and style and heart . . . The ghosts of New York memorialized by earlier writers--F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Richard Price--hover over City on Fire. At the same time, the novel''s ambition and Dickensian storytelling ardor will remind many readers of Donna Tartt''s dazzling The Goldfinch , while its fuel-injected prose and nimble stacking of plot complications will recall for others Martin Amis''s classic portrait of Gotham in Money. But this novel is defiantly and indelibly Hallberg''s own: a symphonic epic that reaches a crashing crescendo during the blackout of July 13, 1977 . . . [In] Hallberg''s XXL tool kit as a storyteller: a love of language and the handsprings he can make it perform; a bone-deep knowledge of his characters'' inner lives that''s as unerring as that of the young Salinger; an instinctive gift for spinning suspense. He also possesses a journalistic eye for those telling details that can trigger memories of the reader''s own like small Proustian grenades . . . 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 "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 "A singular achievement . . . The story engages from the first page." -- Entertainment Weekly "An uncommon pleasure . . . It''s easy to understand the excitement. City on Fire is an epic and absorbing novel." -- USA Today "Profoundly illuminating . . . Timeless . . . Hallberg ties these characters'' fates together with an artful intricacy that is truly remarkable." -- Seattle Times "A probing look at New York City in the mid-1970s. The plot winds and twists through just about every corner of the city . . . And all this amid the blinding light of love, in a great midsummer blackout ." --Scott Simon, NPR/Weekend Edition "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 "Spectacular . . . New York City in the 1970s comes pulsingly alive . . . The book clearly reflects the work of an exciting new talent." -- People " City on Fire is a novel of connection, forgiveness, and empathy . . . Skillfully drawn and beautifully shaded." --A.O. Scott, GQ "Captivating . . . It''s immediately apparent that this is a writer who knows how to do suspense. You''re soon zipping through Hallberg''s vividly realized New York like a child discovering Hogwarts for the first time. Every sentence has been carefully crafted by a literary sensibility in thrall to punk and Balzac, yet it''s unpretentious and funny." -- The Times (UK) "Gorgeous . . . deeply felt . . ., " City on Fire is a big, stunning first novel and an amazing virtual reality machine, whisking us back to New York City in the 1970s with bravura swagger and style and heart . . . The ghosts of New York memorialized by earlier writers--F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Richard Price--hover over City on Fire. At the same time, the novel''s ambition and Dickensian storytelling ardor will remind many readers of Donna Tartt''s dazzling The Goldfinch , while its fuel-injected prose and nimble stacking of plot complications will recall for others Martin Amis''s classic portrait of Gotham in Money. But this novel is defiantly and indelibly Hallberg''s own: a symphonic epic that reaches a crashing crescendo during the blackout of July 13, 1977 . . . [In] Hallberg''s XXL tool kit as a storyteller: a love of language and the handsprings he can make it perform; a bone-deep knowledge of his characters'' inner lives that''s as unerring as that of the young Salinger; an instinctive gift for spinning suspense. He also possesses a journalistic eye for those telling details that can trigger memories of the reader''s own like small Proustian grenades . . . 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 "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 "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 Dickens-size descent into New York City circa 1976-77 . . . 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 . . . The lost souls of Hallberg''s bankrupt New York rise above the chaos, arson and looting, as if a short-circuited urban jungle could cast a transformative spell akin to Shakespeare''s Forest of Arden." -- Frank Rich, New York Times Book 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 "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 ." --Vogue "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who''s read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious." -- Elle "It''s hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city''s punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." -- Entertainment Weekly "Engrossing . . . When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night''s Dream , Manhattan edition . . . As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg''s heroes are theorists of their own universe . . . Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . ., Kirkus Reviews (starred) "A remarkably assured, multivalent tale . . . an epic panorama of musicians, writers, and power brokers and the surprising ways they connect . . . The story never feels overwritten, and the plotlines interlace without feeling pat . . . 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). That's not to say Hallberg has written a pastiche . . . 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. The very-damn-good American novel.", Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered, 944-page 1970s New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Bookforum "Engrossing . . . When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night's Dream , Manhattan edition . . . As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg's heroes are theorists of their own universe . . . Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . . The story itself is dramatic, intermixing a police procedural with a terrorist plot, an addiction plot, an art plot, various adultery plots . . . The result is a narrative that is immense." Library Journal (starred) "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." Booklist (starred) "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." Kirkus Reviews (starred) "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) "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." James Coan, Library Journal (starred) "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." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist (starred) "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." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered, 944-page 1970s New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious.", Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Bookforum "Engrossing . . . When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night's Dream , Manhattan edition . . . As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg's heroes are theorists of their own universe . . . Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . . The story itself is dramatic, intermixing a police procedural with a terrorist plot, an addiction plot, an art plot, various adultery plots . . . The result is a narrative that is immense." Vanity Fair "A soaring debut . . . Over the course of Hallberg's magisterial epic, distinctions of class, race, geography, and generation give way to an impression of the human condition that is both ambitious and sublime." Library Journal (starred) "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." Booklist (starred) "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." Kirkus Reviews (starred) "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.", " City on Fire , by Garth Risk Hallberg: Dickensian, massively entertaining, as close to a great American novel as this century has produced." --Stephen King "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 " City on Fire is a spectacular debut." --Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven " City on Fire is a big, stunning first novel and an amazing virtual reality machine, whisking us back to New York City in the 1970s with bravura swagger and style and heart . . . The ghosts of New York memorialized by earlier writers--F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Richard Price--hover over City on Fire. At the same time, the novel''s ambition and Dickensian storytelling ardor will remind many readers of Donna Tartt''s dazzling The Goldfinch , while its fuel-injected prose and nimble stacking of plot complications will recall for others Martin Amis''s classic portrait of Gotham in Money. But this novel is defiantly and indelibly Hallberg''s own: a symphonic epic that reaches a crashing crescendo during the blackout of July 13, 1977 . . . [In] Hallberg''s XXL tool kit as a storyteller: a love of language and the handsprings he can make it perform; a bone-deep knowledge of his characters'' inner lives that''s as unerring as that of the young Salinger; an instinctive gift for spinning suspense. He also possesses a journalistic eye for those telling details that can trigger memories of the reader''s own like small Proustian grenades . . . 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 "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 "A singular achievement . . . The story engages from the first page." -- Entertainment Weekly "An uncommon pleasure . . . It''s easy to understand the excitement. City on Fire is an epic and absorbing novel." -- USA Today "Profoundly illuminating . . . Timeless . . . Hallberg ties these characters'' fates together with an artful intricacy that is truly remarkable." -- Seattle Times "A probing look at New York City in the mid-1970s. The plot winds and twists through just about every corner of the city . . . And all this amid the blinding light of love, in a great midsummer blackout ." --Scott Simon, NPR/Weekend Edition "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 "Spectacular . . . New York City in the 1970s comes pulsingly alive . . . The book clearly reflects the work of an exciting new talent." -- People " City on Fire is a novel of connection, forgiveness, and empathy . . . Skillfully drawn and beautifully shaded." --A.O. Scott, GQ "Captivating . . . It''s immediately apparent that this is a writer who knows how to do suspense. You''re soon zipping through Hallberg''s vividly realized New York like a child discovering Hogwarts for the first time., Kirkus Reviews (starred) "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." James Coan, Library Journal (starred) "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." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist (starred) "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." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered, 944-page 1970s New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious.", Vogue "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 ." Elle "Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so--one that everyone who's read it roots for . . . An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious." Entertainment Weekly "It's hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city's punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge." Bookforum "Engrossing . . . When the city goes dark, [it] is like A Midsummer Night's Dream , Manhattan edition . . . As in the fiction of Saul Bellow, Hallberg's heroes are theorists of their own universe . . . Every ley line is a life story, every subplot a window on a New York niche . . . The story itself is dramatic, intermixing a police procedural with a terrorist plot, an addiction plot, an art plot, various adultery plots . . . The result is a narrative that is immense." Vanity Fair "A soaring debut . . . Over the course of Hallberg's magisterial epic, distinctions of class, race, geography, and generation give way to an impression of the human condition that is both ambitious and sublime." Library Journal (starred) "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." Booklist (starred) "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." Kirkus Reviews (starred) "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."
