Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | FICTION KEL | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A Novel of High-Stakes Romance and Betrayal, Set During the Race to Finish the World's Tallest Building In Empire Rising, his extraordinary third book, Thomas Kelly tells a story of love and work, of intrigue and jealousy, with the narrative verve that led the Village Voice's reviewer to dub him "Dostoevsky with a hard hat and lead pipe." As the novel opens, it is 1930-the Depression-and ground has just been broken for the Empire State Building. One of the thousands of men erecting the building high above the city is Michael Briody, an Irish immigrant torn between his desire to make a new life in America and his pledge to gather money and arms for the Irish republican cause. When he meets Grace Masterson, an alluring artist who is depicting the great skyscraper's ascent from her houseboat on the East River, Briody's life turns exhilarating-and dangerous, for Grace is also a paramour of Johnny Farrell, Mayor Jimmy Walker's liaison with Tammany Hall and the underworld. Their heartbreaking love story-which takes place both in the immigrant neighborhoods of the Bronx and amid the swanky nightlife of the '21' Club--is also a chronicle of the city's rough passage from a working-class enclave to a world-class metropolis, and a vivid reimagining of the conflict that pitted the Tammany Hall political machine and its popular mayor against the boundlessly ambitious Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Colin Harrison, in The New York Times Book Review, called Kelly's The Rackets "A well-paced, violent thriller, [and] an elegy for the city's old Irish working class." In Empire Rising, Kelly takes his work to a new level: telling of the story of the people who built the "eighth wonder of the world," he makes old New York the setting for a rich and unforgettable story.
Author Notes
Thomas Kelly worked in construction, graduated from Fordham & Harvard, then served as Mayor David N. Dinkins' liaison the labor unions. A Teamster, he writes for "Esquire" & the "Daily News". His first novel, "Payback", has been adapted by David Mamet for a feature film.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Construction was started on the Empire State Building on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1930. It was just as the Depression was beginning to squeeze America in its death grip and every job was sacred. Kelly, who created first-rate working-class heroes in Payback and The Rackets, takes a fascinating look at how New York City was run at the end of the Jazz Age-by bribe, kickback and political machination. The characters are tough and vengeful: Michael Briody, steelworker, WWI vet, IRA gunman; Johnny Farrell, a "narrowback" lawyer who functions as the mayor's bagman; Grace Masterson, a beautiful painter who lives on a houseboat on the East River, holds dark secrets and counts both Briody and Farrell as lovers; and Egan, the governor's dour henchman. Historical figures of the time round out the cast: FDR, the governor of New York, making sure that nothing will hinder him on the way to the White House; Mayor James J. (Jimmy) Walker, a dapper rogue and master practitioner of "honest graft"; Judge Joseph Force Crater, stooge of Tammany, destined to be eclipsed in a legendary way; and Al Smith, the "Happy Warrior," a political has-been now in charge of the construction of the world's tallest building. Kelly weaves a fascinating tale that captures the cadences and decadence of art deco New York, where desperate working-class have-nots and powerful elite swells collide violently in a nation on the brink of great change. Agent, Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The Empire State Building will dominate the Manhattan skyline, all New Yorkers realize in 1930 as construction proceeds, but then, too, nothing gets built in Gotham without a kickback. Thus is the basic premise of this, to borrow construction language, riveting novel evoking in authentic detail the underside of New York City politics during the era of Mayor Jimmy Walker. Kelly's story is basically the tale of a love triangle between Johnny Farrell, an important aide to the mayor; Johnny's artist girlfriend, Grace Masterson; and construction worker and part-time boxer Michael Briody. Each of these characters represents, without the flatness of type, a significant element of the fabric of New York City as the Empire State Building rises ethereally above the street-level realities of hard economic times and how big-city government works. Kelly successfully melds actual historical figures and fictional ones, but in the end, it is New York City itself that emerges as the central character here: a place that makes people the way they are. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
The construction of the Empire State Building in 1930--a display of "the great industrial frenzy of America" in a time of Depression and Prohibition--forms the background for this savage urban melodrama. Like Kelly's previous fiction (The Rackets, 2000, etc., his third novel is a knowledgeable, vigorously detailed portrayal of big-city political and fiscal skullduggery and corruption, featuring a generous host of brawling characters. Foremost among them are transplanted IRA terrorist Michael Briody, who divides his days and nights between sweating as an ironworker on the rising skyscraper, earning chump change as an amateur boxer, running guns to Ireland--and dallying with freelance artist Grace Masterson, the kept woman of NYC Mayor Jimmie Walker's Deputy Commissioner of Buildings, Johnny Farrell (for whom she also makes illegal bank "drops" under various aliases). Kelly keeps it all moving, juxtaposing worksite scenes high above the city, meetings in miscellaneous smoke-filled rooms, hotel rendezvous between Grace and her married lover Farrell, and violence on the perilous streets where men marked by the city's rival Irish, Italian, and Jewish mobs suffer "justice." The supporting cast includes such nicely drawn presences as powerful racketeer Tough Tommy Touhey, crooked Judge Crater (tucked securely into Touhey's pocket until he undertakes an ill-advised double-cross), and Briody's firebrand Irish Republican landlord, Danny Casey, as well as in cameo appearances by Babe Ruth, a sexually frisky FDR, and heavyweight pug Primo Carnera. Alas, it's all a little too familiar. Flamboyant as they are, the characters are mostly types, and their interactions genre-generic. Kelly does build considerable interest in the choices by which Grace and Briody ensure the destruction of the mutual happiness they seek. But we've seen it all before. Nevertheless, Kelly's mastery of narrative drive holds the attention, and few who start this white-hot novel will fail to finish it. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
That's the Empire State Building rising. Kelly, whose first two novels will be appearing soon on screens large and small, here introduces Irish immigrant Michael Briody, a construction worker wrestling with Irish Republicanism and a dangerous affair. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
