Coney: A Novel

Depicting Coney Island circa 1939 in all its garish and gritty human spectacle, the novel - a coming-of-age story of fifteen-year-old Harry Catzker, who takes umbrage with a surrogate family consisting of Coney Island carnival freaks &low-lifes (his father writes a serial novel for the local Yiddish newspaper; his mother grows increasingly bitter yearning for a glamorous life) - has the stark intensity of a Weegee photograph, the heart of Doctorow's Ragtime, and soul of an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel, all shadowed over by the approaching Holocaust. 320p.