City of Light review

City of Light by Lauren Belfer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Although this book is just shy of 500 pages, I read it in 3 days, and I also managed to grade stack of essays and read part of another book. I also made myself slow down to enjoy all the description and really try to soak in some of the history. I have always enjoyed historical fiction, but rarely do I pay much attention to the details of the place since I don't really KNOW the place personally. However, City of Light takes place at the turn of the last century when Buffalo hosted the Pan-American exhibition. The streets and places the characters go are places I know now, and many of them still bear the unmistakable brand of the era they were built in. This is historical fiction at its best when you realize truly the research that went into the book and the accuracy of many of the details and even some of the people. The behavior of many of the tycoons of that era seem in someway so believable to me. I can just imagine the behavior of Grover Cleveland just as described. I can imagine that Albright was as eccentric as depicted, and that Rumsey was the benevolent and arrogant father-figure. Now what I have figure out is if the Love estate is still there in part. I know the Albright mansion was torn down, but what of the Rumsey estate or the Love estate? Now I have a new "search" to add the next time I'm on Delaware Avenue.
The character of Louisa Barrett is one of the more three-dimensional characters in the book, and she is a very believable narrator. She tells the story about 10 years after the final events in the story take place, 10 years after the McKinley assassination. You never really know what is going to happen -- the suspense is kept, the surprises (with one exception) are not really foreshadowed, and even the more predictable surprise doesn't seem predictable until you look back a bit. Louisa seems sometimes wound a little too tight, but when I think about the times and the fact that she was in society without being married...well, then I think I understand the reason: survival.
One of the things that I think makes the book also a "pleasure" besides the story line and the narrator is the way I actually could get just as furious as she did at the arrogance of some of these tycoons. I could see the slums and the charity hospitals and compare them to the opulence of the rich, and I got angry. I understood why the unionists were striking for better wages and especially the better safety and working conditions. I am appalled at the expendability of working class men.
I got mad about the racism too! Mary Talbert was a real person, and having visited 1st Michigan Baptist Church just 6 months ago, I already know quite a bit about her -- a black woman fighting for justice in a very racist country. I loved the relationship that developed between Louisa and Mary, the true rockiness of it, and yet the gradual understanding the two had.
I could go on, but I want to save some for the book club discussion on this, and anything else would include spoilers.



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