1001 Books Round-up September 2023

This months winners and losers or as it really is…this months 3 star reads

Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos. BOTM #1. Synopsis from Goodreads: Considered by many to be John Dos Passos’s greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an “expressionistic picture of New York” (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico’s to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it.

More than seventy-five years after its first publication, Manhattan Transfer still stands as “a novel of the very first importance” (Sinclair Lewis). It is a masterpiece of modern fiction and a lasting tribute to the dual-edged nature of the American dream. An impressionist print I would say.

My Thoughts: This was a library book so I started reading early but I have had to renew as I didn’t finish in the 3 weeks allowed. What this tells me is that I was not engaged with the book and I know this to be true because I never really wanted to read more than a chapter a day.

The vignettes didn’t really work for me as I am not a short story fan and that is essentially what these felt like.

I clearly lost track of characters and was not really interested in their outcome.

I did like the portrayal of life in New York on a surface level.

All I can say is that this was not a book for me.

3 Stars – Not horrendous, not great there are books I would leave to read until after this if I hadn’t already read them.

The Book of Daniel by E.L.Doctorow. BOTM #2. What GR says: FBI agents pay a surprise visit to a Communist man and his wife in their New York apartment, and after a trial that divides the country, the couple are sent to the electric chair for treason. Decades later, in 1967, their son Daniel struggles to understand the tragedy of their lives. But while he is tormented by his past and trying to appreciate his own wife and son, Daniel is also haunted, like millions of others, by the need to come to terms with a country destroying itself in the Vietnam War. A stunning fictionalization of a political drama that tore the United States apart, The Book of Daniel is an intensely moving tale of political martyrdom and the search for meaning. Well it is some of this…

My Thoughts: It was only after reading this that I learnt the book is loosely based on the trial of the Rosenberg’s in the US a case which now it is conceded that while the husband was guilty it is more than likely the wife was innocent and her execution was a political not a judicial decision.

This book explores the effect of this trial on the children of the accused Daniel and Susan. The story is told by Daniel and switches between past and present and between first and third person narratives within the same paragraph. The reason for these switches is because we are reading Daniel’s account of his life and sometimes he seems to forget his role as narrator as firmly inserts himself in the story.

What happened to their parents has impacted both children with Daniel turning into a cruel and vindictive adult and while we might understand why given his past this reader doesn’t forgive him for it, he is a horrible person regardless of the past.

The book also explores the notions of politics and justice and how in this case justice has served politics and not the other way around. The couple never stood a chance, they had already been tried in the court of public opinion before they ever reached a real court and it is only themselves and their children who don’t appear to realise this.

An interesting and thorough look at the impact of the politics of fear and the need of a national enemy to unite public opinion. (side not this failed)

Doctorow also explores all the other possible scenarios relating to his fictional couple from them being completely innocent to them being guilty.

3 Stars – fascinating but in places long winded and some of the descriptive violence could be dropped as it didn’t add to the story.

Have you read either of these? Let us know what you thought.