The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
This one will be started tonight. I've read other work by this author, and love the way he brings factual events to life. The setting of this one is the Chicago World's Fair in 1896.
I just finished it, and don’t recommend it. It is a romance (though pretty tame) and it deals with the underground railroad. All well and good. I will tell you what drove me crazy. The author was pretty sloppy about using expressions (“yeesh” and “cross-dresser” etc) which were not used in the 1840s (I mean I suppose ‘yeesh’ could have been, just as a phonetic utterance, but I’ve only seen it very recently). Also, two young women were sitting on a veranda in the heat, one of them fanning herself, in January! Come on...it was South Carolina, not the southern hemisphere!
In the main story line the hero is 26 years old and was supposed to be very rich and a great success in shipping in South Carolina. However, his father was a doctor and academician at Oxford in England, and I can’t imagine that our hero was raised in great wealth as doctors didn’t make massive amounts anywhere back then, and the childcare of our hero was turned over to a slightly older child for a pittance a day. Where exactly would our hero have gained the knowledge, experience, and connections to become such a fabulously-rich success in shipping in another country? Also, his first wife and daughter were killed in a fire 4 years previous to the book’s main story line, and the daughter was 5 years old at the time of her death. That means our hero would have had to be a shipping success and married at 16?
As for our heroine, she was going to teach 7 and 8 year olds literature…Edgar Allen Poe...even though it was too gruesome for her own reading tastes. Yeesh, indeed!
Sloppiness like this makes me crazy while I’m reading. I bought it for 99¢ as a Kindle deal of the day, but the price is now $8.69, so I would recommend taking a pass on this one. I wish I had.
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I read this a long time ago and remember that I liked it. Just a little clue and I would remember what it was about. One of his is about the Chicago fire but not sure which one. My memory is like Lucy's when she says to Ethel, I hate to brag, but I can't remember what I'm doing while I'm doing it. Or something like that. ha!
ReplyDeleteThis one is not the year of the Chicago fire, but about 20 years later. It is about an architect and a doctor/murderer and the Chicago World’s Fair.
DeleteI read his Dead Wake about the Lusitania sinking, and I loved it. And it seems like I’ve read another of his, but can’t think of it at the moment. I want to read Isaac’s Storm, his one about the Galveston hurricane, but I’ve already filled my reading for the ‘Texas’ category this year. :)