Waterworks

Rating:
Summary: Why the expansion of a great idea doesn't always work
Review:

I am a great E.L. Doctorow fan, and I love his ability to craft a tightly-woven historical narrative. I also love the way Doctorow can write in the first-person perspective, creating an empathy between reader and storyteller, as he did in "World's Fair" and "The Book of Daniel". In "The Waterworks," Doctorow creates a historical narravtive in the first person which tries to capture the essence of New York in the decade following the Civil War, and using a mystery as the hook to pull the reader in. As much as I am a fan of Doctorow's work, I have to say that here, he fails to pull it off.

The narrator of the book, a newspaper editor named McIlvaine, tracks the disappearence of a brilliant young writer named Pemberton. Pemberton disappeared after seeing a "ghost" of his thought-to-be deceased father, who left his widow and children penniliess, despite amassing a large fortune throughout his life. The ensuing pursuit of the truth (as Pemberton chases his father and McIlvaine chases Pemberton) through the streets of a very different New York City are dazzling in their detail and electricity, but the fault lies in the execution of the story: Doctorow simply does not effectively keep the reader interested in the story, and thus it can get quite confusing at times. My suspicion is that Mr. Doctorow did not just come up with the story and then try to write a novel about it. My theory is that this novel is actually an expansion of an essay he wrote a couple of years before. "The Waterworks" was written in 1994. In 1992, Doctorow wrote an essay called "The Nineteenth New York," which is included in a collection of his essays entitled: "Jack London, Hemmingway, and the Constitution" [Random House, 1993]. Both the essay and "The Waterworks" contain a description of New York which use the same quote from Whitman ("Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!..."), and the same description of Newsboys "battling for their corners"; both describe Lincoln's funeral train travelling through the city in suspiciously similar ways.

In my opinion, Doctorow liked the idea of "going back" to old New York, and used this story to do it. Therefore, the novel has an atmosphere, a gritty realism that only Doctorow could create, but strangely falls short in narrative, something Doctorow--almost--never does

Rating:
Summary: An intellectual mystery that makes the reader think...
Review: about more than whodunit. E.L. Doctorow is really smart, so he doesn't write the run-of-the-mill mystery.

The Waterworks is more about ideas - a society's obligation to confront politcal corruption, ethical questions that arise as humankind's scientific knowledge advances, the ethical obligations of journalists - than the mystery of why a young man has disappeared and if he's dead or alive.

Doctorow captures the atmosphere of New York City of the 1870s. His characters, esp. the narrator McIlvaine and the Police Captain, are complicated and intriging.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Plot, Not Enough Detail
Review: Although I enjoy historical fiction, this book just did not measure up to others that I have read.

This is the first E.L. Doctorow that I have ever taken the time to read, and I hope not indicative of his storytelling.

The book is chock full of possibility, but never really delivers. The title, first and foremost, is a confusing choice, as 'the waterworks' only appears in the latter portion of the book as a setting, and a part of the story.

Doctorow captures some of the elements of life in post-Civil War New York, and has a wonderful basis of story, but never fully delivers on any of it. Every character, every plotline, every twist and turn seem secondary, as if there is some huge payoff waiting to happen, which never arrives. This story screams for further development.

The narrator, McIlvane, tells the tail of his friend and colleague, Martin Pemberton, who is convinced of the sighting of his 'dead' father, Augustus, a wealthy, wretched man who left his wife and other son behind to be taken away to die by a doctor. McIlvane then finds Martin among the missing, and follows a trail of grave-digging, murder, and disappearing children to Martin, and to the force behind all of this, a Doctor Sartorius.

Again, the story has a lot of potential, but it is never realized. All of the plot elements are left unexplained, save for a blurb from Sartorius at the end trying to explain his actions and the reason behind them, but even that leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall this was a bit of a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting post-civil war setting, but...
Review: An excerpt from a letter to my author-friend, D.Stanwood: Thanks for your letter and for sending the Le Carre book. I've just finished The Waterworks by E.L. Doctorow, which has been kind of a slow read for me. It seems to me that this author, talented as he is -- and the style is strikingly elaborate -- gets so mired in his ornate descriptions of the human condition that the story telling sort of takes a back seat in the process. Built around the shenanigans of William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed's corrupt government in 1870 New York, the premise holds plenty of potential for juicy suspense but just doesn't quite deliver. I imagine the Lit critics quite disagreed, so this is only my take and nothing more. I did not read Ragtime but I loved the story as it was told on film, and I know he is brilliant. In all fairness, I am not a patient reader, but I expected more from The Waterworks. --- Best, Don

Rating:
Summary: Poe-pourri
Review: Apologies for the awful pun, but I think a little someting is needed to counterbalance the ponderous over-readings that have been in some of the reviews.

To my mind, Doctorow is, in this novel utterly successful in what he sets out to do, the only problem is whether or not what he is doing is something you want to read.

I feel it is unfair to suggest that this novel is in any way attempting to be a "Gravity's Rainbow", when it seems clear that this book is something of a literary joke. It is much less that "Gravity's Rainbow", because it never aims to be anything comparable (and those of us who appreciate a novel that isn't as preciously over-stated as that one will breathe a sigh of relief).

Doctorow aims here to create a Gothic melodrama, and, using twentieth century writing techniques to show both the flaws and the strengths of the period piece. Those who despised the ending, I would send back to Poe, and ask them to find any of his stories in which the ending doesn't look tacked on, or "incomplete" as one review has it.

Doctorow succeeds utterly in giving us a piece of 19th century popular literature, my problem is that I don't feel the form he has chosen has given him the scope to examine his strengths. It is a wonderful book, having a wonderful atmosphere and respect for his souce material, but I miss the raging Doctorow of "The Book of Daniel" or "Lives of the Poets". In my view, he is one of the best novelists of men, and the impotence we can feel. that is present here, but never exploited as it is to such good effect in his other books.

This is a good book, but not a great one, and, unfortunately, not one of his best.

Rating:
Summary: Nice basics; too many ellipses
Review: As the other reviews atest, this one is is mixed - I kept putting this one down, but picking it up again. The 19th century NY setting is good, and the plot is engaging. If you found The Alienist enjoyable, you'll find something to like in this book - same atmospherics, same ghoulishness.

However the narrator is pretty much a bore. He's a newspaper editor whose style is apparently meant to show the digressive tendencies of an educated and curious mind. It could be charming, I suppose, in a less plot driven novel. But the book focuses on a carriage of zombies riding down Broadway. This is not a subject you want a lot of digression on.

I couldn't figure out why this one was putting me off so much until I finally grew tired of the narrator's frequent ellipses. I started flipping through the book, and wow - a quick count shows that most two-page spreads have at least ten of them. When you have to rely that hard on rarish punctuation, something is wrong with your style.

I'm 1 for 3 with Doctorow. I thought that Ragtime was excellent - much better than Chabon's Kavalier and Clay. World's Fair wasn't - I read a chapter or two and returned it to the library. This one is in-between - not as leaden as World's Fair, but still pretty slow, due to an unfortunate choice of style for the narrator.

Rating:
Summary: New York in the Days of Boss Tweed
Review: Doctorow's novel The Waterworks is an impressive historical novel that I would recommend to anyone interested in reading about New York in the latter part of the 19th century. The imagining of post-Civil War New York is quite striking. Other readers have stated that the characters are not quite as mesmerizing as others in period crime fiction like those in Caleb Carr's The Alienist, but the narrator of Doctorow's book eloquently conveys the cultural sensibilities of an era when Boss Tweed was king and New York was a work in progress. Obviously, comparisons between The Waterworks and The Alienist are logical and while I would recommend Caleb Carr's novel about a slightly later period to anyone who likes a great story, I would argue that Doctorow crafts a stylistic gem that will attract less of the same readers but the book merits praise and showcases the underbelly of a city in transformation. To understand the legacies of Lincoln and Tweed and chart the rise of the daily newspaper, the novel admirably succeeds.

Rating:
Summary: Doctorow's Post-Civil War New York Mystery a Disaster.
Review: E.L. Doctorow's change-of-pace mystery is a disaster. Lacking in this novel is almost everything that makes Billy Bathgate and World's Fair great: the narrator's attempts to interpret the universe, the way in which the characters' minds work, and the exceptional prose. This reads like some long-abandoned idea given a second go in order to complete a book contract! Infinitely shorter than Doctorow's other books, the reader will nevertheless feel as if he or she has just endured a long walk through deep mud for nothing. Read Billy Bathgate again instead.

Rating:
Summary: Mystery among the omnibuses
Review: E.L. Doctorow's THE WATERWORKS is likely to draw comparisons to Caleb Carr's THE ALIENIST. That would be comparing apples to oranges. Carr's 19th Century novels are wonderfully plot-driven with somewhat rounded characters. Doctorow's mystery is more cerebral: to me the solution was less interesting than how the characters got to it. I'm not going to re-hash the plot; there are several other reviewers who have already done so. What I think needs to be addressed is Doctorow's uncanny ability, no matter which of his historical novels you read, to keep late 20th century values out of the minds and mouths of his characters. This is a temptation that's tough to resist, but Doctorow pulls it off every time, and especially here. Considering the narrator is a 19th Century writer (journalist actually), 20th Century Doctorow must have used supreme discipline to ring true to the era. A great virtuouso performance.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points

Rating:
Summary: Thin and Pretentious
Review: I found this book unsatisfying.

Although it tries to evoke the same turn of the century portrait as the Alienist (by Caleb Carr), The Waterworks does not succeed. The plot is thin and characters not fully developed. The author struck me as more interested in the writing than the story and in style over substance.

This book has been described as American literature. If this is literature, I prefer a good old American novel.