Ragtime
Ratings49
Average rating3.8
Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, NY, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. Almost magically, the line between fantasy & historical fact, between real & imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud & Emiliano Zapata slip in & out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family & other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler & a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
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I didn't dislike this but didn't like it either, so can't give it more than three stars. If I hadn't been listening to it, I probably would have given up on it. It's just too snapshot-y and I didn't feel like I really knew the characters. I also didn't like that things were completely made up about real people. It was fine.
Engaging historical fiction, full of verisimilitude and intriguing detail. I loved the incorporation of the personalities of “greats” of the time, like J.P. Morgan, Houdini, and Henry Ford–even if these personalities are entirely fictitious. By the end of the book, I was so engrossed that I wasn't able to differentiate between the factual historical events and the ones that Doctorow invented. Occasionally preachy, but a bitingly sarcastic social commentary on the wealthy class of the past (and even today).
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