The World of Tomorrow
Brendan Mathews
(Author)
Description
Three brothers caught up in a whirlwind week of love, blackmail, and betrayal culminating in an assassination plot, set in prewar New YorkJune 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother Michael are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin's home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family's revolutionary past.
When Tom Cronin, an erstwhile assassin forced into one last job, tracks the brothers down, their lives begin to fracture. Francis must surrender to blackmail, or have his family suffer fatal consequences. Michael, wandering alone, turns to Lilly Bloch, a heartsick artist, to recover his lost memory. And Martin and his wife, Rosemary, try to salvage their marriage and, ultimately, the lives of the other Dempseys.
From the smoky jazz joints of Harlem to the Plaza Hotel, from the garrets of artists in the Bowery to the shadowy warehouses of mobsters in Hell's Kitchen, Brendan Mathews brings prewar New York to vivid, pulsing life, while the sweeping and intricate storytelling of this remarkable debut reveals an America that blithely hoped it could avoid another catastrophic war and focus instead on the promise of the World's Fair: a peaceful, prosperous "World of Tomorrow."
Product Details
Price
$39.09
Publisher
Thorndike Press Large Print
Publish Date
September 09, 2017
Pages
768
Dimensions
5.4 X 1.7 X 8.6 inches | 5.4 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781432843366
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About the Author
Brendan Mathews writes fiction and teaches at Bard College at Simon's Rock. A 2011 finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Prize, he has published in Best American Short Stories, Cincinnati Review, Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. He lives with his family in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Reviews
Advance praise for The World of Tomorrow
"What a beguiling debut Brendan Mathews has given us in The World of Tomorrow clever, smart, ambitious, richly textured, and moving."
--Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Everybody's Fool
"What a book! The World of Tomorrow is a panoramic tour-de-force, a huge undertaking peopled with convincing characters and animated by a persuasive historical accuracy. But beyond all that, my fascination was with the way Mathews assembled the novel, sifting and endlessly resifting his characters like sand, as life itself piled up right in front of me. The grim realities of America on the cusp of a second World War will be recognizable, but in this capable writer's hands, the individual characters-passionate, secretive, naive, lucky, unlucky, and sometimes hapless-remain full of surprises to the last. They exist not against the backdrop of history, but tangled up in its complex, cruel, or absurd demands, desperate to find whatever space is allowed them for intimacy."--Ann Beattie, PEN/Malamud-winning author of The New Yorker Stories
"Brash, bold, completely entertaining, and dazzling in its evocation of time and place, Brendan Mathews's splendid debut offers pleasures on every page."
--Andrea Barrett, National Book Award-winning author of The Air We Breathe and Ship Fever
"What a beguiling debut Brendan Mathews has given us in The World of Tomorrow clever, smart, ambitious, richly textured, and moving."
--Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Everybody's Fool
"What a book! The World of Tomorrow is a panoramic tour-de-force, a huge undertaking peopled with convincing characters and animated by a persuasive historical accuracy. But beyond all that, my fascination was with the way Mathews assembled the novel, sifting and endlessly resifting his characters like sand, as life itself piled up right in front of me. The grim realities of America on the cusp of a second World War will be recognizable, but in this capable writer's hands, the individual characters-passionate, secretive, naive, lucky, unlucky, and sometimes hapless-remain full of surprises to the last. They exist not against the backdrop of history, but tangled up in its complex, cruel, or absurd demands, desperate to find whatever space is allowed them for intimacy."--Ann Beattie, PEN/Malamud-winning author of The New Yorker Stories
"Brash, bold, completely entertaining, and dazzling in its evocation of time and place, Brendan Mathews's splendid debut offers pleasures on every page."
--Andrea Barrett, National Book Award-winning author of The Air We Breathe and Ship Fever
