Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Sue recommended Paradise Alley to me, so I've started working on it. The book is thick enough to serve as a handy doorstop, or to knock an unwary pedestrian severely unconscious. It's taking me a while to get into: all those descriptive passages for mere minutes of a character's time! It takes place in New York City against the backdrop of the Civil War, while the draft is being enacted and plenty of Irish-Americans are unhappy with it. I must be hundred or so pages in, and it's still morning of day one, in the dead silence that comes before a mob outbreak. Rather unnerving.

2 comments:

d-wain said...

Is it a historical fiction novel or a dramatized history a la In Cold Blood?

That's funny about your apartment kitchen. My apartment off of Broadway had an incredibly tiny kitchen with a sloping ceiling that made it impossible for two people to work in it at the same time!

Laura said...

Historical fiction through and through (as far as I can tell).