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Chargement... The Great Mistakepar Jonathan Lee
Mystery & Detective (109) Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Andrew H. Green, Anwalt und Stadtplaner, wird am Freitag, den 13.11.1903, vor seinem Haus in New York erschossen. Green, ein 1820 geborener Selfmademan, gilt schon damals als "Vater von Greater New York" und als Initiator des Central Parks, der Public Library und des Museums of Modern Arts. Der Täter ist schnell gefasst, doch Inspector McClusky, der Greens Haushälterin als Zeugin verhört, rätselt lange daran, welches Motiv den Mörder Cornelius Williams angetrieben haben könnte. War Green selbst schuld an seinem Tod? Ein umfangreich recherchierter, episoden- und porträtreicher biografischer Roman mit dezentem Krimiplot, dessen Rückblenden und Zeitsprünge komplex verschachtelt sind. Jedes der mit einem der Central-Park-Tore überschriebenen Kapitel durchleuchtet Kindheit, Jugend, gesellschaftlichen Aufstieg und Durchsetzungsvermögen des Protagonisten. Ein sprachlich kunstvolles, fast berichtsähnliches Lesevergnügen. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
"From the acclaimed author of High Dive comes an enveloping, exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, a story of one man's rise to fame and fortune, and his murder in a case of mistaken identity. On Friday the 13th of November, 1903, a famous man was killed on Park Avenue in broad daylight by a stranger. It was neither a political act nor a crime of passion. It was a mistake. The victim was Andrew Haswell Green, the "Father of Greater New York," who shaped the city as we know it. Without him there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. His influence was everywhere, yet he died alone, misunderstood, feeling that his whole life might have been, after all, a great mistake. A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is a portrait of a self-made man--farm boy to urban visionary; the reimagining of a murder investigation that shook the city; and the moving story of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him, and, in spite of all odds, enlarged it"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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There is not much going on in the way of plot - the only things really driving it are (a) your desire to find out what motivated Green's involvement in major public projects like creating New York's Central Park; and (b) the mystery around why Green gets shot in his eighties (NB not a spoiler - this is in the blurb and happens at the start of the book). I didn't find either of these was enough to keep the momentum going over the full length of the novel and the last section was quite hard going. I felt that (a) had already been covered by what we find out about Green's childhood and life as a young adult (although I did find these parts more compelling and others have noted, the author manages to generate a fair bit of sympathy for Green). With (b), there wasn't much mystery to it, ultimately (and I'd guessed what the answer was long before it was confirmed). Another problem with it is that, because we start with him dying in his eighties, we already know quite a lot about what he has become and so any tension over things like "Will Green get back in touch with his close friend Samuel Tilden when he returns from working in Trinidad?" is largely absent - we already know he does, so the only question is how this happens.
Perhaps I shouldn't complain about the lack of such mundane things as plot - after all, this is a literary novel and my mind should surely be on higher things..... As I say, I could appreciate its literary merits, but I was less bowled over by them than some of the reviewers quoted on the book jacket. Did I actually enjoy reading it? Well, if I'm honest, only parts of it - getting all the way to the end felt like quite hard work. ( )