City of Strangers
A Novel
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Faith, family, and the weight of history intersect in this remarkable debut from a rising literary talent
A cold, gray Sunday dawns on New York City to find Paul Metzger trudging through the winter streets to visit his past. He goes first to see his estranged, decades-older half-brother; then his dying father, whose notorious early life still haunts his children; and finally the ex-wife he cannot help but continue to love. But a fourth encounter-violent, unexpected-sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change Paul's life, as well as the family he's struggled so long to understand.
Ian MacKenzie's stirring and lyrical debut is a story of a family inalterably fractured by its past, of a man who refuses to believe that what is done cannot be undone, and of a world that insists-catastrophically, in the end-otherwise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A novel as grim as it is extraordinary, MacKenzie's debut tells the story of two estranged brothers at odds on how to view their Nazi-sympathizer father. Paul Metzger has troubles: a struggling writer with a dying father and an intense longing for his recently ex-wife, he's also estranged from his much older brother. In what ends up being more than a random act of violence, Paul is pummeled while trying to stop two men from assaulting a boy outside his Brooklyn apartment. Shortly after, Paul's father, Frank an early Nazi sympathizer who retains some notoriety decades later dies, and Paul receives a lucrative offer to write a book about his father. Meanwhile, Paul's hedge fund brother, Ben, under investigation for insider trading, faces prison time, and one of the goons who beat Paul pursues him across the city. All of this leads to unexpected turns that shed light on the major characters. MacKenzie sets up a New York rampant with alienation and misunderstanding, and his visceral narrative, powered by taut prose and braced with sturdy philosophical and psychological underpinnings, is a winner.