Description
“Entertaining . . . outsized . . . The World of Tomorrow views its teeming cast of characters as though from the observation deck of one of the city skyscrapers that seem to ‘burst from the pages of a comic book.’ . . . Reveling in bold twists and fantastic coincidences, Mathews’s big, expressive debut inhabits a world that’s neither of the past nor the future but wholly of the imagination.”―Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
“This Doctorow-esque debut novel shimmers with the swing and swank of 1939 New York . . . Mathews’s urban epic is as rich and raucous as the city it celebrates.”―O., The Oprah Magazine
“Mathews has a big, rambunctious talent . . . He is a wonderful scene-setter, whether he’s describing the streets of Manhattan in the wee hours or conjuring the glories of then brand-new Rockefeller Center . . . The gusto of his prose and vividness of his characters keeps the novel gyrating with zany energy . . . An exuberant debut novel.”―Michael Upchurch, Chicago Tribune
“The World of Tomorrow is that rarest of historical novels, a book that catches a moment in a jar, holds it aloft, and displays it for what it really is: Somebody else’s day before tomorrow, the instant right before the future comes . . . Mathews’s entire novel takes place over the course of one week in June of that year, culminating at the World’s Fair itself, in a fast-paced finale worthy of a Scorcese long-take. And I love this about the book. I love the bright-eyed joy of it. The meticulous attention to detail that actually serves the plot . . . And I like that Mathews made this big book so intimate . . . One of the strengths of his story is the way it sprawls and loops. It finds odd little corners of time and place and character to get into and, in those corners, it finds both a balancing seriousness and a wideness of vision.”―Jason Sheehan, NPR
“As rich and raucous as the city it celebrates.” —O., The Oprah Magazine
“Admirably fearless . . . Mathews has talent in buckets.” —New York Times Book Review
One of Entertainment Weekly’s 20 Must-Read Books of the Fall
One of the New York Post‘s 15 Books You Won’t Be Able to Put Down This Fall
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
An amNewYork Subway Book Club pick
Four starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Library Journal
A Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch
One whirlwind week of love, blackmail, and betrayal in teeming prewar New York
June 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother, Michael, are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin’s home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family’s revolutionary past.
When Tom Cronin, an erstwhile assassin forced into one last job, tracks the brothers down, their lives begin to fracture. Francis must surrender to blackmail or have his family suffer fatal consequences. Michael, lost and wandering alone, turns to Lilly Bloch, a heartsick artist, to recover his decimated memory. And Martin and his wife, Rosemary, try to salvage their marriage and, ultimately, the lives of the other Dempseys. Meanwhile, with the Depression receding, all of New York is suffused with an electric feeling of hope, caught up in the fervor of the World’s Fair and eager for good times after a decade of deprivation.
From the smoky jazz joints of Harlem to the opulent Plaza Hotel, from the garrets of vagabonds and artists in the Bowery to the backroom warrens and shadowy warehouses of mobsters in Hell’s Kitchen, Brendan Mathews brings the prewar metropolis to vivid, pulsing life. The sweeping, intricate, and ambitious storytelling throughout this remarkable debut reveals an America that blithely hoped it could avoid another catastrophic war and focus instead on the promise of the World’s Fair: a peaceful, prosperous “World of Tomorrow.”
