- Turtleback: 264 pages
- Publisher: Demco Media (Aug 30 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0606300139
- ISBN-13: 978-0606300131
- Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Each novel by Doctorow is an entirely different experience, a journey of the imagination into hitherto uncharted territory. The Waterworks , set in the corrupt but hideously exciting New York of the decade following the Civil War, is the strangest such journey yet. The narrator, an elderly newspaperman named McIlvaine, recalls the bizarre events surrounding the disappearance of one of his paper's best freelance writers in 1871. Martin Pemberton was the son of Augustus Pemberton, a brutal, cunning man who had made a fortune as a war profiteer, then died, leaving his family mysteriously penniless. Martin was convinced he had seen his father alive, in a coach in the company of other old men; then Martin vanished. McIlvaine interests the municipal police, in the person of odd, incorruptible Captain Edmund Donne, and together they ferret out a weird scheme in which aging millionaires have paid the brilliant, cold-blooded Dr. Sartorius to preserve their lives in a state of suspended animation. The tale has the brightly lit intensity and surreality of a dream, heightened by McIlvaine's halting, amazed narration; and such is the power of Doctorow's imagination that the very city itself, its burgeoning modernity, its huge machines, its febrile citizenry, seems to become a major actor in the drama. World's Fair and Billy Bathgate were both given a human dimension by their child's-eye point of view. Here Doctorow is taking a larger risk by placing the reader at a much greater distance from the events and subduing his contemporary sensibility in favor of a wonderfully convincing 19th-century angle of vision. It is as if Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James had somehow combined their incompatible geniuses to bring this profoundly haunting fable to life.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From School Library Journal
YA?Newspaper editor McIlvaine investigates the disappearance of freelance journalist Martin Pemberton and uncovers a macabre scientific experiment that involves Pemberton's supposedly dead father and several other wealthy old men. The narrative's digressions contain the heart of the novel: Doctorow's presentation of New York in 1871 as impacted by the Industrial Revolution and the corruption of Boss Tweed's government. Although the book is not overly long, its complexity of diction will deter all but the most erudite YAs. Those who persevere will gain insights into journalism, post-Civil War society, and political corruption while considering the implications of medical experimentation, then and now.?Arlene Bathgate, Chantilly High School, VA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
an excellent example of literature,
By A Customer
This review is from: Waterworks (Mass Market Paperback)
This is one of the few books that I had to read twice to fully understand. The plot is complex and builds upon itself really well. The characters are admirable, and the story is well plotted with the history of New York. An excellent book, I do not think it gets the recognition it deserves. I recommend it to any intellectual fiction reader
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mystery among the omnibuses,
By
This review is from: Waterworks (Mass Market Paperback)
E.L. Doctorow's THE WATERWORKS is likely to draw comparisons to Caleb Carr's THE ALIENIST. That would be comparing apples to oranges. Carr's 19th Century novels are wonderfully plot-driven with somewhat rounded characters. Doctorow's mystery is more cerebral: to me the solution was less interesting than how the characters got to it. I'm not going to re-hash the plot; there are several other reviewers who have already done so. What I think needs to be addressed is Doctorow's uncanny ability, no matter which of his historical novels you read, to keep late 20th century values out of the minds and mouths of his characters. This is a temptation that's tough to resist, but Doctorow pulls it off every time, and especially here. Considering the narrator is a 19th Century writer (journalist actually), 20th Century Doctorow must have used supreme discipline to ring true to the era. A great virtuouso performance.Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mr. Doctorow has written a fairly good mystery novel,
By
This review is from: Waterworks (Mass Market Paperback)
In _The Waterworks_ E.L. Doctorow tries his hand in writing a mystery and the results are fairly successful. Doctorow is no stranger to period pieces, as all of his readship knows. It is circa 1871, in New York City and the notorious Tweed Ring is very much in control of the Democratic Party's Tammany Hall and much of everything else that matters. In _The Waterworks_ the narrator, Mr. McIlvaine, the city editor of a New York newspaper, while endeavoring to investigate the disappearance of Martin Pemberton, a freelance critic, unwittingly assists in efforts to ovethrow Boss Tweed and his gang. Besides being quite atmospheric and evocative of that era, the book is loaded with colorful characters, including the fabulously wealthy, but dastadly Augustus Pemberton (father of Martin), who is presumed dead but occasionally shows up in the most unlikely places, the incorruptible Captain Donne (a possible former love interest to Martin's widowed mother), and the very shadowy and mad scientist-like Dr. Sartorius, who figures strongly in some strange doings regarding a number of street urchins and some very wealthy, but very sickly old men. There is a graveyard scene in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx that, although somewhat familiar to fans of the horror genre, may cause some readers' hair to stand on end. The plot contains no particular surprises or innovations in the mystery-horror realm of novels, but is nevertheless fairly well written and held my interest. Mr. Doctorow does, however, give away the solution to the mystery too soon, thereby dampening somewhat the novel's impact. He would done better by waiting to the very end to reveal this, rather than choosing the ending he did, however charming.
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