World's Fair

Hardcover, 288 pages

English language

Published October 1985 by Random House.

ISBN:
978-0-394-52528-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
12051431
ASIN:
0394525280
Goodreads:
1103685

View on OpenLibrary

(1 review)

E. L. Doctorow's World's Fair is a wonderfully poignant creation of a certain New York City boyhood of the 19305, seen simultaneously through the eyes of the child himself and through those of the adult who recollects that childhood. It is a time of innocence and Depression—summer dance bands in the Catskills and comic-strip adventures in the Daily Mirror, football games at the Polo Grounds and rumors of war in the evening news. In successively smaller Bronx apartments, with their Venetian blinds, their knickknacks, their familiar furnishings packed ever closer, a mother ekes out a precarious budget from the tenuous profits of the father's Times Square music store. Near the schoolyard, the boy spots the German zeppelin Hindenburg looming sudden and majestic over the housetops, its nose tilted down, before it silently recedes, a speck over the Manhattan skyline. The family—the parents and their two sons—struggles to hold together …

7 editions

This novel is about everything bar the World's Fair

I'm researching World's Fairs and Expositions for a project.

A novel called "World's Fair" seemed like a sure bet.

Warning - the World's Fair only turns up at the very end of the book. If you're buying this based on the title, prepare to be a little disappointed.

However what this novel is, is an increadibly detailed snapshot of a Jewish family during the back end of the Great Depression, on the edge of the Second World War, from the viewpoint of a young boy. You get a day to day view of what life looked like, from the brands of record players through to the makes and the look of the cookers as the family move between homes. Styles change, and the family changes with them. This family changes over time, from younger and hopeful, to older and dare I say weary?

An excellent novel to get a …

Subjects

  • Boys -- Fiction
  • Bronx (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction

Lists